Maggie Jackson chat transcript

Maggie Jackson: Hi - Glad to be with you today! I'm the Globe's Balancing Acts columnist and the author of the new book, Distracted, which is out tomorrow. I'm finding that this topic - the erosion of attention in society - strikes a chord with so many of us - workers, bosses, parents, educators. So please fire away with your questions and comments...

brc: Hi maggie -- do you know any kids around 13 years of age that DON'T text message? I find it hilarious that seemingly every single kid in middle school has a cell phone. Is our future as a society doomed?

Maggie Jackson: Hi - Kids today surely are tech-savvy, but this doesn't mean that society is doomed! I think all our gadgets today are great, but they do change our lives - we're so mobile, split-focused, cyber-centric - that we're squeezing out room for "pause" - for conversation, for reflective thought. That's the problem. We need to re-balance - and particularly nurture our powers of attention.

Maggie Jackson: In my book, I talk about the costs of living distracted. When we aren't fully aware or split our focus all the time, we essentially don't go deeply, in thought or in relationships. We become a skimming culture - and that's dangerous. But new discoveries related to attention can help - for instance, attention can be trained! That's exciting news for us all.

BDC: Hi Maggie .. where did you get the idea to write the book?

Maggie Jackson: Good question- I thought I'd write a book about technology - so I researched some of the first high-tech inventions, from the cinema to the telegraph. I searched for clues to how we can live better with our gadgets. But then I discovered that now we face many of the same experiences - mobility, virtuality, split-focus - that our ancestors did. We've been building toward a climate of distraction for generations! That led me to understand that the key to surviving 21st-century living is attention -

brc: also, there was an article in the globe this weekend about parents snooping on kids' text messages .... what are your thoughts on the role of parents with new technology thats becoming more and more complicated

Maggie Jackson: That's a great question. There's a chapter in my book on "intra-family surveillance." This is a kind of Hyper-vigilance, hyper-attention that comes from wanting to control our kids' lives. But what is the fate of trust when we watch our kids (or employees all the time) - trust after all is a risk-taking. I think we have to scale back the surveillance!

Maggie Jackson: I want to add that it's hard for parents - and I'm one too. Because our society is boundary-less - there are no walls between the greater world and home, or between work and home - so it's hard for parents to feel that they can protect their kids anymore. But I'm not so sure the world is more risky. It's just that often we think we can control risk - to the minute. I think we need to give each other more "presence" rather than more watching.

boundaries: HI Maggie, I work in an office that relies heavily on email and instant messaging. Do you have any strategies for striking a balance between responding quickly to messages and emails, while maintaining focus on other projects?

Maggie Jackson: Another great question. A new non-profit has just been started by thinkers from Microsoft, Google, Intel etc. to combat "information overload." We need to have a range of ways to recover focus in the workplace. Some companies have "white space" - rooms or times on the calendar for more focused work. IBM has "think fridays." Also, try setting aside times for reacting to messages - rather than hopping on email all the time. Just getting a little distance helps. Finally, practice focusing intently - you'd be surprised how much you can build up this skill just by trying to keep your eye on the ball of a particular project.

Slemmy: that's intereting. i wonder what do you think of those speed-reading people, how-to's, etc? i am a slow reader because if i go to fast i dont even know what I just read

Maggie Jackson: Hi - I have heard a bit about speed-reading, and certainly this way to tackle info and skimming in general has its place in an info-overloaded society. We do have more information than ever before. But a steady diet of only skimming doesn't make for deep learning - that's proven in the literature. Did you know that U.S. 15-year-olds score 24th out of 29th on tests of problem-solving?

Joe: Hi maggie --I liked your article a week or two ago on companies who allow their workers to bring their babies to work. Do you think this is a flash-in-the-pan type of thing, or is it something, with the rising costs of everything, that more employers will look at?

Maggie Jackson: Certainly, on-site daycare is too costly for many companies to consider, and many parents don't want to leave their young infants in daycare all day. I think this is a trend that will stay - for some companies.

Maggie Jackson: On the subject of distraction, though, I do have to wonder whether we're so inured to multitasking that we think we can get work done while keeping one eye on our kids! It's not for everybody.

Maggie Jackson: Just to add a bit more on info overload, some scientists are discovering that the average knowledge worker switches tasks every three minutes! And half the time, they are interrupting themselves. One research firm - Basex - estimates that interruptions and the requisite recovery time - cost U.S. companies $650 billion a year.

aka: oh also, does logging into this chat from work count as good or bad distraction ;) (hey, its lunch time!)

Maggie Jackson: Good distraction - you're learning how to handle 21st-century living!

maggie_fan: Maggie, enjoy your column...If you had 5 tips for folks on focusing at work, what would they be? It seems to hard to balance needed face time, projects, email, IM, phone, that I end up getting in very early just to mop up before the onslaught.

Maggie Jackson: Hi - See my article running on boston.com today, "10 Ways to Quell Distraction." A few tips are: be very wary of interruptions, they are costly; be a role model of attention, ie. fully focus on others and they will give that gift of attention back to you; try to value times of stillness and thought, in our culture being on the move is seen as "successful." that's not always so!

maggie_fan: About skimming -- seems like the more you skim, the more likely you are to make a bad decision...I heard (don't want to get political here) that if you weren't fluent with Power Points you couldn't get a decent White House hearing...all about executive summaries, not about underlying complexities...

Maggie Jackson: Interesting. Early on in my book I talked about PowerPoint, and how its bullet-point style is so expected and demanded in companies and now in schools. But we can't blame PowerPoint - it's gotten popular - 400 million copies worldwide now - because we are gravitating toward valuing headlines over in-depth content. According to a social scientist who's studied how people do research, we can't really get to the nub of whatever we're researching unless we find "focus" during the process. Focus is crucial to creative work too.

Qudrcps: Recently, a person in our office was handed a Blackberry with eseentially no instructions, was told that she was to forward all her her mail to it, and, no surprise, has ended up with 90+ messages a day. I've talked to her about setting some ground rules for filtering this, but she's afraid to talk to our boss about the information overload.

Maggie Jackson: This is such a tricky question. The boss does set a tone in an office culture; if they're sending emails at 2 a.m. on Saturday, then they send a real message about working long and hard. So bosses need to role-model having boundaries between home and work, plus "giving the gift of attention." Paul Levy, the hospital chief, told me this a while ago. Still, workers too need to take responsibility for drawing boundaries. It's a two-way street.

Maggie Jackson: I think that our culture of efficiency and productivity overall also affects these questions. Frederick Taylor, the great time management guru of the 19th century, believed in chopping up work in order to streamline it. Now, we still chop up work, although we don't make widgets. We fragment our knowledge work in tiny pieces - giving ourselves no time to think!

bogenvillia: Hello Maggie, do you think that as a culture we are ready for this shift from dizzingly 'industrious' to carefully crafted & focused? With wages going down & productivity going up, do you think that workers are in a position to renegotiate how they work and work best?

Maggie Jackson: Well, time is the most priceless currency. Here we are as humans living longer than ever before, yet so often squandering our lives, nose-down in the blackberry, missing conversation, intimacy and even the change of seasons. It all boils down to what "Life" is for. To answer your question, I do think we are ready to at least swing the pendulum back a bit away from our dizzying, frenzied lifestyles. I see so many people ready to question their blurry, sprinting lives. And I do think the issue of attention can help.

Maggie Jackson: Just to add a bit, I'd like to see a "renaissance of attention." The world's greatest attention scientist, Mike Posner, believes that attention should be taught as a discipline in pre-school. After all, attention is the key to learning, memory and even happiness.

aka: You mentioned "white space rooms" and the like ... are those effective? there is a series of commercials -- for what product i forget -- that basically make fun of the idea, the point being that people need to "do" and not "think." is this a result of our culture? Or just bad marketing :)

Maggie Jackson: I haven't seen those commercials. It's interesting that the commercial makes fun of thinking! One third of workers today find that they have no time to reflect on or process the work that they do! How can we go forward as a knowledge, innovation economy when we have no time to think? That's also at the heart of our current engagement crisis - focus is key to engagement.

too_many_things: do you find that yoga is a really big help to people throughout the day, or just a minor help in dealing? also, do smokers tend to be more distracted?

Maggie Jackson: I don't know much about yoga, although I should probably take it up! I do think that any activity - whether it's yoga, birdwatching, meditation, reading - that can dial down the pace of life a bit has benefit. One more tidbit from the research: studies show that workers who are interrupted are more stressed, frustrated - and prone to angry outbursts.

brc: i'm glad you talk about boundaries between work and life. my last job, i could get a call at any time of my days off and asked to do something for my boss (i had remote access to work) ... it led me to eventually quitting, because i was the only one who could do a lot of the things requested. i didn't even get paid for doing those things (no OT at that job). Do many employers take advantage of their employees by crossing those boundaries like my old boss?

Maggie Jackson: Hi - Glad you found a job with more boundaries? We have made many strides in work culture; now flexibility is offered at most companies, in some fashion. But the flip side of our new freedom and mobility is endless work. Many companies are realizing that this leads to burnout, and they're promoting vacations, days off without work, etc. It will take a while before we can find a middle ground between Industrial Age office-centric work, and new forms of contained, bounded Digital Age work.

cell_world: i can't stand the cellphone culture. for every good thing they bring, there are 10 bad things. people are in their own little worlds. talk about distraction! some people are living through a little box they can talk, text, etc. into. real human communication is being lost

Maggie Jackson: I do worry, too, about the loss of public space and serendipitous interactions. When we're tethered somewhere else, it's easy to remove ourselves from life around us, whether we're home or on the street. Virtuality also brings "optionality" - there's always another person to chat with, to email, so it's easier to run away from a problem or uncomfortable situation with someone. On the flip side, cell phones connect people who once couldn't keep up- immigrants separated from children and home, or others distant from loved ones. Cell phones are tools - it's how we use them that counts.

tony: What can i do with a co-worker who is making personal calls 6 hours a day and is very very loud when she talks. i've approached her boss but get blown off because this person has been here 25 years and she's not going to change? Her boss is very passive and doesn't want to rock the boat.

Maggie Jackson: That's a tough situation. One study shows that our cubicle culture leads to more interruptions, although they are often "good interruptions" - i.e. that pertain to work or help you with a problem. The noise pollution issue in cubes is tough. If they aren't going to change, maybe you could try earplugs or ear phones for now - at least to soothe your own anger. Also, show them some of the literature on interruptions and maybe they'll take it more seriously.

Maggie Jackson: By the way, before our session ends in a few minutes, just wanted to mention that I'll be doing a reading from my new book, Distracted, at the Brookline Booksmith on July 17, 7 p.m. Also you can catch me tomorrow on the Diane Rehm show, live at 11 a.m. eastern, talking about the book and how it relates to the future of a healthy democracy.

cube_farm: do people who hate their job tend to have more distractions? i had a job i hated once where i had nothign to do. i NEEDED distractions to keep busy. my current job is real busy and i'm always in 10 places at once but i like it much more than having nothing to do

Maggie Jackson: Distraction means being pulled away - often to something that's less of a priority. We can distract ourselves, or be involuntarily distracted. (Interestingly, an archaic meaning of the word from long ago is "being pulled in pieces" - still seems true today!) So distraction is in the eye of the beholder. If you're not happy at work, I'd think you would be more prey to being distracted. And by the way, humans are prone to distractions, they are interrupt-driven, because we have to stay tuned to our environment! At the same time, we need to have focus - to pursue our goals!

cube_farm: what channel is the show on?

Maggie Jackson: Hi - The Diane Rehm show is NPR. If you go to wbur.org I think you'd find it or google Diane Rehm for a local listing!

DR: In our old office, my manager, 2 developers and I shared the same office. He liked to have his hands free to type, so he took most of his longer calls on speaker phone. My co-workers' cell phones rang all day long. Project conversations were held in front of the person's desk - or 8 feet from me. I was actually happy when we moved into cubes. Until that point I survived with noise-canceling earphones.

Maggie Jackson: Boundary-less living! We have to find tools and strategies to cope, that's for sure...

Maggie Jackson: Thank you for being with me today. Don't forget to check out "10 Ways to Quell Distraction" on Boston.com - and the book Distracted. It was great chatting with you all. Thanks for your attenton! :)