Friday, January 02, 2009

Control of Attention May Be The New Work Ethic

"A person who works six hours a day but with total focus has an enormous advantage over a 12-hour-per-day workaholic who's "multi-tasking" all day, answering every phone call, constantly checking Facebook and Twitter, and indulging every interruption. It's time we upgraded our work ethic for the age we're living in, not our grandparents' age. Hard work is still a virtue, but now takes a distant second place to the new determinant of success or failure in the age of Internet distractions: Control of attention. Hard work is dead. Are you paying attention?"
- Mike Elgan

Read this whole post. Probably good for most of us blog readers to consider.


(HT: Lifehacker)

2 comments:

GrayDave said...

People with good attention control probably aren't reading blogs.

Anonymous said...

Dave,

Isn't that a pretty sweeping generalization?

I do think, though, that blogs, and the internet in general, have not been good for more than a few attention spans-- mine included. For example, prior to my exposure to the internet, I found it much easier to sit and read a book for an hour or more at a time. Not that I *can't* do so now, but it takes more conscious discipline than it once did.