Hey…is that a bike???
(Saint Etienne – Hobart Paving)
Work has been busy. My mind has been concussed with all the focus. Focus was never a strong suit for me. I remember as a kid, my teachers would always tell my parents that I was one of the least attentive students in the class. As an honour student, I was never concerned about their assessments. Surely, this was arrogance on my part. In retrospect though, I might have been well served with a psychological assessment on ADD. This reminds me of a joke.
How many ADD people does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Hey…is that a bike???
I’m not even sure if that’s how the joke goes, I didn’t pay attention when it was being told.
Remember university, and how we used to procrastinate? I think that has to be a common characteristic of people with short attention spans. I remember working on essays and reports and taking 2 hour breaks in between each paragraph I wrote to play computer games. What would normally take a focussed person 5 hours to write, it would take me 12 hours. Those 12 hours would usually be from 8pm – 8am. Now I know I wasn’t the only one. In fact, I’d say a large majority of us have this tendency. So would it be safe to assume that most of us have some problems focussing? Or could it be that we’re all in professions, academic programs or environments that aren’t fully suited to our needs? Maybe it’s a little of both.
So here I am, part of the working world; up to my chin with work, and I’m blogging. You can’t really run too far from your own dispositions, can you?
2 comments:
some people argue that our short attention spans can be blamed on MTV style media we consume as children. Everything fast paced, cuts to different scenes, constant action. I'd argue we're all trying to do too much all the time and not getting enough rest and sleep to function at our best (as a society). Compare us to Europeans who take long lunches and go to spas regularly. We could learn from them (if our schedules allowed)
I would probably agree that most of our problems are caused by social upbringing. Not only is media and the culture of capitalism a problem, we've also have our peers and family to blame. Parents shower their kids with tons of toys to keep them pre-occupied while they work after hours instead of spending quality time with them. We also form these large groups of friends that divide our attention. Birthdays are celebrated in large numbers and you end up speaking with each person for about 5 minutes the entire night.
It's definitely a problem in our society today.
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