Interesting conversation around this. While I have "known" multi-tasking is a myth in my professional life, I've always viewed multi-tasking in my personal life as a function of maximizing my free time. When watching movies, I always use the time to also do something else- skim a book, catch up on my magazine subscriptions, scroll through social media, etc. In close observation of our 7 year old over the last few days, he most definitely has not yet picked up this habit. But just as MB observed in her 15 year old, I suspect it wouldn't be far behind with my own son.

I am constantly concerned about the effects electronics, social media and gaming has on our youth. Every month or so we force our oldest to take a 6-7 day break from all the above. Its amazing how quickly he stops asking for them but even more amazing how quickly he finds more active activities.

Maybe I should take a page from my own instructions to my kids, take a break (as much as possible) from electronics/social media and see how quickly I find other more fruitful activities to pursue. At a minimum, over the next 3-4 days, I'm going to make a concerted effort to be more singular focused in my personal life and lets see if it yields similar "a-ha" impacts as its had in my professional life.

Happy Fri-yay Barton friends!

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From: barton@stagen.simplelists.com <barton@stagen.simplelists.com> on behalf of Dudley, Mary Beth <MaryBeth.Dudley@orix.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2019 10:32:14 PM
To: barton@stagen.simplelists.com
Subject: RE: Is this why my attention span is shot?

Mike:

The timing of your email “Is this why my attention span is shot?” could not have come at a better time.  Just prior to your email (12 minutes before to be exact) I was sitting on the couch in my media room reviewing emails, responding with prioritization, and planning my day for tomorrow.  The entire time I was so tempted to chase look to the next email without addressing the one that I was working on because I was curious about the subject line of the next email.  It was really working hard to work through my 25 minutes of “the Pomodoro technique” that I shared with Barton class but I pushed through the critical priorities for the evening.   Just as I finished up with my 25 minutes of very productive and effective work, I looked up in total and complete devastation to see the following in front of me:

·         My 15 year old son sitting in front of the tv binging on Fort Nite

·         Head phones on talking to 6 friends

·         Computer on the floor watching a MSU basketball game replay from earlier in the week

·         All this while occasionally glancing down on occasion at his geography map of Asia that he has to study for an upcoming test next week

OMG!!!!!  On Sunday, I had read the “Myth of Multi-tasking” and was shocked to see it playing out with my freshman in high school right in front of me this evening.  The irony is that my 15 year old is one of the only kids in his freshman class that does not have a cell phone for many reasons including that we see so many kids addicted to social media, cell phones, texting etc ---- the reality is that I was observing my 15 finding ways to feed the dopamine response that technology, ADT and multi-tasking creates.  Ugggghh!

In many ways I truly am concerned not only about how this will affect my kids going forward and how this will affect the future of our society in our ability to interact with others in meaningful ways.  Will our genetic make-up be programmed differently because of the way that technology and ADT rules the way that we now interact/socialize and drive our day?

This really makes me stop and think about how I need to model single tasking, being focused/disciplined and being present in front of my kids.  In addition, it surfaces the priority in addressing this with my kids now well before this becomes a bigger issue.

Thoughts?

Best,

Mary Beth

From: barton@stagen.simplelists.com [mailto:barton@stagen.simplelists.com] On Behalf Of Mike Smith
Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2019 8:33 PM
To: barton@stagen.simplelists.com
Subject: Is this why my attention span is shot?

Well shoot, just read the “Myth of Multitasking” article and realized I’d been protecting myself from an ugly reality.

As a person who has really, really high switching costs, I’ve had to be a uni-tasker for years. So high marks at work for dedicated blocks, and no phones or email checking.

I have a nightly solo decompression time. I’m an introvert who does highly socially fatiguing facilitation of work groups so need to recover before starting again the next morning.

But each evening I spend an hour doing “media multitasking” while I watch Netflix, while reading articles, and other twitchy mobile device things. But I realize now that’s causing harm to my brain wiring! Maybe this is why watching a movie feels like a million terrifying years.

-mike smith