Thursday, June 6, 2013

F.Y.A. For Your Attention

Information is cheap.  Attention is priceless.

Information is global. Knowledge is local.

And, mindfulness makes a difference anywhere.

"The great challenge of our age: to not only live connected to one another through technology, but to do so in ways that are beneficial to our own well-being, effective in our work, and useful to the world."

The quote above appears in Arianna Huffington's excellent post on the Wisdom 2.0 summit.  The quote is from the web site of Soren Gordhamer, conference founder and author of Wisdom 2.0: Ancient Secrets for the Creative and Constantly Connected.  

In addition to Huffington herself, the 2013 guest speaker list is impressive (see list on Huffington's post). Her point is a good one, namely that it is techno-phobes, but rather the very techno-aware that are calling for us as human beings to stay connected to our inner selves and to connect with each other in meaningful ways, i.e., to give each other attention, not merely information.

Joining the likes of Nicholas Carr (The Shallows: How the Internet is changing the way we think, read and remember), Daniel Goleman (the EQ guy) writes in Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, a new book he'll publish this fall: "Overloading attention shrinks mental control. Life immersed in digital distractions creates a near constant cognitive overload. And that overload wears out self-control." (see my Reading List).

We know that too much information reduces our ability to pay attention to what really matters to us personally.  But, giving our attention to others is also extremely important to their motivation, as illustrated in this 20-minute TEDx Talk by Dan Ariely, 'What makes us feel good about work.'

Other posts on distractions at work.
'There's something wrong with the way we work'
'Hamlet's BlackBerry'

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