It has come to my attention that… that’s a nice knot in the table. Fetching, arty almost. I think I’ll make a cup of tea.
It has come to my attention that I have the attention span of a small child recently thrust into a ball pond filled with toy lions to hug and lego bricks to put into its mouth.
I am not alone, you’re probably just as bad. As a collective whole we’re becoming less and less focused at an alarming rate, distracted by each and every little thing that pops up into our parameter.
Facebook, Twitter, you name it. Email, text messages, phone calls, they keep coming. Even the need to constantly be up to date with the news, with your favourite TV shows, with your closely followed blogs. They’re all distracting as hell.
I’ve started on my way to cutting as many distracting elements out of my life. Not one by one, but as many as I can, as quickly as I can. I’ve got stuff to do! The world waits for no man.
As my own antidote to relieve us of our lack of collective focus, from now onwards my posts are going to shorter, and more frequent. I will still be writing up essay-type reports from time to time, but on the whole I’m going to keep things short and to the point. I’m sure many of you who have been reading my blog for a while will have had times when you saw I’ve written something new, clicked on it, seen the length of it and thought “Maybe I’ll give this one a miss”. I don’t blame you one bit, I do it all the time with other peoples work. We’ve all got stuff to do! We’re as busy as can be.
I recently upped my posting schedule from once to twice a week. We’re on the up again. 2-3 times a week of shorter (under 300 words) articles are on the menu. Let’s regain our attention, one post at a time.
###
If you’re a writer, I can’t recommend distraction-free text editors highly enough. There are loads to choose from, most of them are free, though it’s always nice to donate.
Some of the best out there are: Ommwriter, Readability, Dark Room, Creawriter and WriteMonkey. They all have similar features, take your pick.
| Tweet
|
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Ben, been readinf your posts for a while now, great stuff man! Just wanted to contribute, ommwriter i am currently using to write a lab report with, the free version i could not recommend highly enough, it plays soft background music and you write on what looks like a snowy meadow, kind of hard to explain but brilliant for distraction free writing!
http://ca.lifehacker.com/5782717/ommwriter-brings-its-relaxing-distraction+free-writing-tool-to-windows
-Sanjay Larsen
Hey Sanjay! Ommwriter looks great. I’ve heard of it before, it must of slipped my mind while writing this post. I’ll add it up there now, and I’ll use it to write the next post.
Cheers man
- Ben