A thought provoking piece in the Times today by Ben McIntyre notes that we are in a state of “Continual Partial Attention“, unable to concentrate for long enough to do anything much beyond reading 140 character tweets or brief emails. Interestingly, he also refers to as “recent” (written in July 2008!) the oft mentioned piece by Nicholas Carr in The Atlantic on “Is Google making us stupid“, where the author notes that he struggles to read books or even lengthy articles (such as one may find in, umm.. The Atlantic!).
I find more and more that one value I offer to clients in my strategic consulting to them is an incredibly simple one.. I am able to focus for long periods of time on the specific issues that face them, researching, writing, and more than anything, THINKING…so that when I do meet them, oftentimes I have been able to spend more concentrated time on the subject in the run up to a meeting than they have in weeks or even months.
Not everybody is fortunate to be in my position of having a consciously limited number of clients to focus upon, so leaving me with time to think and, amazing in this day and age, read and absorb papers, articles, and even (!) books.
However, even if you are suffering information overload, try to recognise where the state of “Continual Partial Attention” is having a negative impact on you and your business… and try, try, and keep trying to carve out some uninterrupted time to focus on the key “thought” issues.
