Some articles open with a whimper, some with a bang. This one is in the latter camp: > Busy, distracted, inattentive? Everybody has been since at least 1710 and here are the philosophers to prove it It’s an interesting read, where the author, Frank Furedi, is looking at the past in an attempt to address the concerns of the present. Concerns regarding attention, or the lack thereof. And he claims we’re not dealing with anything new, but with an issue that has been around for 300 years. > Those…
All posts in attention
Interesting take on the “Internet Sabbatical” and its ilk. Matthew Malady found it was a waste of time. His reasoning is that giving up constant distractions the online life brings is not equal to the price of giving up the access to instant knowledge available online. His conclusion: > At the end of the experiment, I wasn’t dying to get my phone back or to access Facebook. I just wanted to get back to being better informed. You’ll likely not be surprised at all to hear that I disagree with his…
A review of Cal Newport's Deep Work, one of the best books I've read in some time.
Patrick Rhone received an incredible gift for Christmas this past year. A friend gave him the opportunity to take a personal retreat. All he had to do was pick the time and place and everything was taken care of. And although the act of getting away from everyone, everything, and most importantly, everything online are great on their own, his retreat came with a single room cabin, the wilderness, fresh baked bread, and artisanal cheese. That is some friend! Patrick shared a few of the entries…
Remove friction for doing work and increase friction for activities that we can do in place of work.
The need to discipline our brains is real; otherwise we believe in the notion that we always need to up to date.
All the changes that have been introduced over the past decade via the Internet have been focused on one thing. Sharing. Sharing thoughts, sharing photos, sharing work. Sharing experiences … well, just the attractive parts, but hey, that's still sharing. Above all else, I appreciate the ability for anyone, almost anywhere, to share their thinking or experience or knowledge by writing and publishing on the Internet. Being unshackled from some of the barriers of times past is perhaps the greatest…
There are times when the changes that the Internet has wrought in my life over the past 10-12 years simply amaze me. One of those areas can be simply summed up as content. It's a lump of items that can be hard to define, but I believe content is applicable. Consider everything the Internet brings us these days. News and events. Sports. Entertainment. Knowledge and research, information (and speculation) on a subject of interest. All of these come mixed together now on one medium. Often from the…