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Innovation

Are we being conditioned to have attention deficit disorder?

Gadgets are turning us into a nation of obsessive multi-taskers.
Written by Heather Clancy, Contributor

When was the last time you sat in your office and did absolutely nothing?

And I mean nothing: took your hands off the keyboard, shut the ringer down off your mobile device, and stared out the window and thought creative thoughts about how you could be a better leader or manager or team contributors? I bet very few of you reading this are able to sit still and do this for more than five minutes. I dare you! Set the timer on your cell phone if you absolutely must.

I have often theorized in the past several years with my colleagues and friends and family that we are a nation, a generation (because it's affecting people of every age) that has been conditioned to have attention deficit disorder (ADD). In fact, in some ways, you can't be successful if you don't have it. As I write this, I'm checking e-mail, since I've got four (five?) different accounts and I received literally hundreds every day. I've got my Google reader and my calendar for the workday open, and I've just printed an article from the New York Times about this very topic so that I can look away from my computer for a few moments and collect my thoughts about what I'm writing.

This past weekend, I had a "retreat" with my Sweet Adelines a cappella chorus. Music is the one thing that really keeps me focused these days. But even on my so-called retreat (think about what that word means), I checked email and my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts during every possible break. I kept connected. In fact, I HAD to be connected.

The Times article I've referenced above talks about the mental price that we pay by allowing gadgets to control our brains. The fact that we've been rewired to think in bursts, that we are quite literally incapable to concentrating beyond a certain length of time.

One of the women in my chorus mentioned that she is connected to her young teenage niece via Facebook. Often, this young person's status posts are pretty simple: "I'm bored." How very sad that someone that young isn't able to focus enough on the world around her to enjoy the moment, to marvel in the world around her. But she has been been conditioned to feel this way.

This, indeed, is something we need to get smarter about. Technology is an integral part of our lives and that will never change.

But one way to make better use of the time we must spend multitasking is to make sure that we pick at least one small window of time every day in which our brains can rest while awake, can tap into our imagination. I was about to say a time in which we can think like a "child," but sadly many of our children haven't every been allowed to do this. Is that smart?

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com

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