Do Less, Accomplish More

A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last.
Both do the same thing; only at different times.
Baltasar Gracian

The NYT Tech section had a great article on concentration today.  The attachment to strong inputs like television creates distractions that prevent concentration and focus.  Meditation is one way to increase concentration.

I used to believe in the multitasking approach to get more done, now I’m a believer in single tasking.  Stick with the task until it’s finished.

“Multitasking is a myth,” Ms. Gallagher said. “You cannot do two things at once. The mechanism of attention is selection: it’s either this or it’s that.” She points to calculations that the typical person’s brain can process 173 billion bits of information over the course of a lifetime.

The article provides little practical information but it is interesting,

She recommends starting your work day concentrating on your most important task for 90 minutes. At that point your prefrontal cortex probably needs a rest, and you can answer e-mail, return phone calls and sip caffeine (which does help attention) before focusing again. But until that first break, don’t get distracted by anything else, because it can take the brain 20 minutes to do the equivalent of rebooting after an interruption.

“When I woke up in the morning, I’d ask myself: Do you want to lie here paying attention to the very good chance you’ll die and leave your children motherless, or do you want to get up and wash your face and pay attention to your work and your family and your friends? Hell or heaven — it’s your choice.”

Winifred Gallagher

“People don’t understand that attention is a finite resource, like money,” she said. “Do you want to invest your cognitive cash on endless Twittering or Net surfing or couch potatoing? You’re constantly making choices, and your choices determine your experience, just as William James said.”

The article is here:

NYT Concentration

Diversions are here:

Tierney Lab