The Distraction Addiction

The Distraction Addiction

In his introduction to The Distraction Addiction: Getting the
Information You Need and the Communication You Want, Without Enraging
Your Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Destroying Your Soul (gotta
love the title!) Alex Soojung-Kim Pang describes a Japanese monkey
park and its macque inhabitants. They are smart and curious and
highly distractable...sort of like people under the spell of
electronic media. "...The monkey mind is attracted to today's
infinite and ever-changing buffet of information choices and devices.
It thrives on overload, is drawn to shiny and blinky things, and
doesn't distinguish between good and bad technologies or choices."
Sound like anyone you know?
Pang is not telling us we're headed to Hades in the proverbial
handbasket due to electronics. Throughout human history technology
changes have enabled life style changes. Way back in the day they
facilitated the shift from hunter-gatherer to a more settled life
style. The printing press with more wide spread literacy was another
real game changer.
What Pang cautions against is the indiscriminate use of
electronics where urgent sounding is confused with important, social
media are accessed constantly--even while driving a several ton hunk
of metal and glass at 60 miles an hour, and the term Internet apnea
had to be invented to describe how most people involuntarily hold
their breath when they open their email. He would like us to look at
how we currently use electronic media, think how we really want and
need to use them, and transition from the former to the latter.
That's what the book is all about. Each chapter gives more tools for
our kit. Simplify, for example contains ways to use a computer
without being sidetracked by a series of peripheral temptations.
Experiment ecourages looking at personal practices and the feelings
they engender.
My favorite chapter was the one on rest. It introduces the idea
of the digital Sabbath, a weekly day long total or partial unplugging
to reconnect with real world interests and friendships. Rather than a
deprivation, it can be a joyful time of embodied mindfulness, of
spiritual awakening. And I certainly plan to take up that
practice...except having my cell phone phone available if my kids need
to connect.
If you feel that you are a servant of your electronics instead
of vice versa, if you feel overwhelmed and exhausted at the demands
they make on your life, or if you see signs in this in someone you
love, The Distraction Addiction is a very wise investent.
On a personal note, one of the things I admire about my mentor, Dr.
Betsy Webb, is her ability to go off line to live mindfully in the
real word. We're both outdoor enthusiasts. We know that whether
it's ice fishing on a crisp January day, watching a summer meteor
shower, walking among the flame colored trees of autumn, or getting
eye to eye with an albino leaf hopper, nothing on the Internet can
beat Mother Nature for awe inspiring. Also because Betsy is mindful
of her electronics use my heart sings when I see that I have an email
from her. She has given thought and feeling to the message she has
sent me. In this day and age that is a precious gift indeed.
I am so glad that I was out of the loop electronics wise when my
children were young, using my computer only to type papers for
customers and rarely play a game or two of solitaire. I was fully
there to read to them and go sledding and bus to the library...no cell
phone, no email. I look at parents pushing a child on a swing while
texting and think how much they are missing.
A great big shout out goes out to all who seek to help us use
electronic devices as tools to help us accomplish tasks rather than
very demanding masters whose every whim must be surrendered to.
Julia Emily Hathaway



Sent from my iPod