Skip to main content

Distraction Timed

Perspectives
Shouldn’t we all be encouraged to focus less and get distracted more? Tune out of the status quo, blow the arbitrary deadlines and protocols, and spend more time staring at the ingenuity of light refracting on the side of a grey, cement building or the gradation of cloud layers.
| Allison Hope | Issue 159 (May - Jun 2024)
This article has been viewed 5808 times
Distraction Timed

In This Article

  • I wonder how much time I waste per day on mistakes, distractions, mis-turns. Are there people who don’t get distracted or make mistakes?
  • What is life if not the amalgamation of a million little observations? A hundred thousand fleeting moments of beauty and terror that were captured when we weren’t on deadline, head-down, trying to focus and be productive and get the thing done. Life happens when we are distracted.
  • Can you go to the edge of Earth, of life if you’re worried about the end goal? Can you truly explore the depths of human emotion and experience if you are trying to drive efficiencies in your workflow or manage through protocols?

I have given myself approximately two hours, 12 minutes, and 14 seconds to write this essay. The amount of time it takes me to get to work and back on the train.

Now, I have eight seconds less.

Subscribe

More Coverage

Editorial: Seeking Solace from “Cancellation”

Editorial: Seeking Solace from “Cancellation”

Holding abusive people accountable is important, but aren’t we overstepping a bit on this? In our digital age, many of us with a smart phone feel like we have a responsibility to “correct” anyone we disagree with, and we want to ...
Distraction Timed

Distraction Timed

I have given myself approximately two hours, 12 minutes, and 14 seconds to write this essay. The amount of time it takes me to get to work and back on the train. Now, I have eight seconds less. I never timed how long it took to write a senten...
Rising Above Cancel Culture: A Call for Compassion and Growth

Rising Above Cancel Culture: A Call for Compassion and Growth

In 2017, a Harris County Assistant District Attorney in Texas became involved in a case of mistaken identity after a woman with the same name posted racist remarks about African American women on Twitter. In the following weeks, Facebook and Twitt...
Acknowledging Idling

Acknowledging Idling

Attention is a very widely used, yet contested term in neuroscience [1], and therefore, easiest to define by its absence. The things we don’t actively do, studied via “resting-state” neural activity, also shape our behavior [2]. There is strong ev...