Digital lifestyle and continuous partial attention
With so much going on in our lives today and the proliferation of internet devices from iPhone’s to Twitter accounts it’s all too easy to get distracted from your task at hand. Being an online marketer you need to embrace a digital lifestyle and you must be willing to participate and engage with people instantly. Everyday we consume vast amounts of information, some of it sticks and some of it doesn’t. One minute I’m reading a newsfeed, then the phone rings while I’m on the phone I get a New Instant message, twitter update and email message while someone hovering over my desk talking about what they’ve planned for the weekend, which has just reminded me that I forgot to book the restaurant for the dinner I promised my girlfriend! Oh and I must call the travel agency to get those tickets for our trip to South America. Sound familiar? STOP!! There’s multi-tasking and there’s multi-tasking but trying to process too many things at once will cause a memory crash and you’ll end up doing nothing or a half ass job of things. This scenario is described as continuous partial attention.
Write down what you need to do. Break it up into personal and work and then break down each work task you need to do. Turn off those email alerts and if email is a problem close down your email client and limit yourself to checking emails every 1 hour or so. But what if there’s an urgent email! Check on the hour every hour. (oh, just got an idea, how about an email scheduler which auto kicks in to let the sender know the estimated time of reading!) ha ha good example of too much going on in my head! When you have a task to do which doesn’t involve the internet disconnect from your internet devices and concentrate on the task at hand. (how about an easy pause internet function which allows you certain access once the task is performed)
I’m constantly thinking of new ideas or ways to make or do things better. Even before I go to sleep my head is full of thoughts which my mind is trying to sort into the right filing cabinet! STOP! It’s crucial that you get a good nights sleep so, write down what you need to do the following day, disconnect from your digital life an hour or so before you hit the hay and find a way to relax before u hit the hay. Then like hotels.com slogan says - wake up happy!
Now you’re ready to take on a New day and crack into that to-do-list!
ahh that’s better, that post was floating around in my head for a few days…
I'm James O’Sullivan 
