Oh joy, while reading my 1283 feeds this morning, a great article at Read/Write Web jumped out at me. That’s because it’s the first to explain why, despite the absence of recreational substance abuse, my brain feels a mixture of drugged, speedy, flitty and fragmented all at once. There’s a name for this condition, and it’s not “ADHD.” It’s called Continuous Partial Attention.
What kind of new-fangled jargony state of affairs is this? Alex Iskold explains it nicely in his post:
We are splitting our attention over a rapidly growing body of online information.
To cope with that we replaced reading with skimming and learned to work in an environment with constant interrupts. We no longer have time to pause and reflect, let along think for a while.
Today we have successfully replaced attention with what Linda Stone coined and Marc Orchant recently wrote about: Continuous Partial Attention. So are we making a mistake by stretching our attention thin? Not necessarily, it is just a new way of doing things that we have to adapt to.
Now, being a web dude, Iskold goes on to talk about software solutions and of course mentions one of my favorites – Basecamp. And also goes on to mention, and I agree, that it’s not the mecca of one-stop-software application that many of us crave. Basecamp does a few things well, but it leaves you relying on outside calendars and contacts, which are central to collaboration as well. Things like a Google Home page help aggregate needed applications into one place, but it still lacks the integration and connectedness of Basecamp.
In any case, two things I take from this. I am not alone in feeling like I’m on caffeine overload doing too many things at once, and there is, by god, a name for this condition. That and I shouldn’t panic over this. Maybe it’s not worse, but just different. I don’t actually feel that way, but I am trying to believe.
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