the higher you fly

I stumbled on this article through this Oreilly Radar entry. I’d say that a lot of people “suffering” from this already know it implicitly, but she words it efficiently.

Continuous partial attention describes how many of us use our attention today. It is different from multi-tasking. The two are differentiated by the impulse that motivates them. When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. We’re often doing things that are automatic, that require very little cognitive processing. We give the same priority to much of what we do when we multi-task — we file and copy papers, talk on the phone, eat lunch — we get as many things done at one time as we possibly can in order to make more time for ourselves and in order to be more efficient and more productive.

To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention — CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is that we want to connect and be connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter.

What’s difficult is getting this through to a boss, colleague or friend who also is bogged down by it. As a programmer, it’s important that I be extra careful. I tend to easily sink into this pattern to the detriment of my work (and family).

(I figure there is possibly an RSS feed somewhere with all of Linda’s posts, but still, I created a Yahoo Pipes feed of the entries posted on the Huffington Post under her name. The pipe is accessible here)