A decade ago I heard a graduate professor suggest that the next item of scarcity in the world could be human attention. The comment arose from a conversation around advertising. Advertising, like children tugging at our coats, desperately competes for our attention. But so too does work, play, sleep, and relationships. Every day we make decisions, conscious or not, about what "makes the cut" for how we spend our attention.
Attention isn't just time. Attending to a task or a person requires concentration. Brain scientists tell us that multitasking isn't as efficient as it feels; context switching may be efficient for computers, but it's terribly inefficient for humans. This isn't just true of texting and driving--it's also true when you're e-mailing, checking FaceBook, finishing a proposal, and participating in a meeting. Multi-tasking just doesn't save time; it actually takes more time than attending to each item in sequence.
Next up: awareness.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
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