My wife read In Praise of Slowness last year during some stressful work times and found the book sensible and enlightening. I noticed this article and forwarded it to her at work (thereby interrupting any 8 minutes of concentration she had going). I thought others might enjoy it as well.
The typical office worker is interrupted every three minutes by a phone call, e-mail, instant message or other distraction. The problem is that it takes about eight uninterrupted minutes for our brains to get into a really creative state.
The result, says Carl Honore, journalist and author of In Praise of Slowness, is a situation where the digital communications that were supposed to make working lives run more smoothly are actually preventing people from getting critical tasks accomplished.
Read more here.
Friday, July 22, 2005
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4 comments:
Great article. This happens to me everyday. I have to shut down my email app if I really want to get something accomplished.
Like 337is said, that book was a great comfort to me during very stressful times at work. Even though I did not feel like I was really able to put the principles to work in my own life, it somehow seemed to make the world less chaotic, knowing that someone somewhere was living a slow lifestyle. It's my dream to visit that town in Italy that's supposed to be all about the slow lifestyle. Ahhhhh!
Leave it to Leslie to know about a book that discusses a concept I'm just beginning to feel . . . We found our recent trip to Italy very refreshing--partly because we were separated from much technology, but also because it was free from the "Walmart-ization" of the world. Is it possible that food tastes better because it's not grown on mega-farms? When we inquired about a certain olive oil at a grocery store on the west coast of Italy, the reply was "Oh, we don't carry that--it comes from Tuscany" -- which was about 30 miles away . . . Let's hear it for slow food, slow towns, long, interesting, slow conversations!
I have also read teh same just recently in 2008. I know this is an old post but it is true. It is amazing we get anything done at all with so many distractions
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