What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
-- Herbert Simon
Multi-tasking is dead. It never worked and it never will. Intelligent people love to sing its praises because it gives them permission to avoid the much more challenging alternative: focusing on one thing.
-- Tim Ferriss
There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
-- Henry David Thoreau
I've been reflecting recently on my attention--how I spend it and how to regain it.
There are many lifestyle habits that I've always had that allow me to preserve my attention:
- I don't play online games
- I don't own a cell phone
- I don't watch TV or rent videos
- I don't watch online video
- I don't use online chat
- I don't use social networking websites
What I'm concerned about is my consumption of e-mail and RSS feeds. To address this, I've created the following self-imposed rules:
- Only read e-mail on weekdays and only before 8 PM
- Only read work e-mail at work, once per day, at the end of the work day
- Only read personal e-mail at home, once per day, early in the evening
The same applies to RSS feeds and general internet access.
To support these rules, I've placed my 'Google Reader' and 'Gmail' gadgets in a separate iGoogle tab from the one containing my to do lists and schedule. This separation serves as a reminder that I have constraints on how I consume incoming information.
I copied the 'Compose Mail' link from the 'Gmail' gadget into the Bookmarks gadget. This allows me to send e-mail without seeing my inbox.
References
- Scott Berkun's 5-minute video defines the problem of attention, and the need to control it to achieve greatness.
- Tim Ferriss describes how to regain attention by going on a low-information diet. All the great quotes at the start of my post come from Ferriss's article.