Multi-tasking

In a Guatemalan village

I am sitting in Parque Central, in the shadow of Agua (one of Guatemala’s recognized volcanoes), in the middle of Antigua.  And I am grateful for the miracle of drugs, after a day with my Periodontist.

Medication or no, the park in Antigua is always good for whatever ails me.  For no matter the day or time, the Park is alive with people.  Tourists, locals, sitting, spending the hour, workers on break, couples unmindful of the world, and los lustradores (the young boys eager and self-assured looking for a few Q to shine your shoes, even the tennis shoes).  This is a park where unrepentant loitering is anticipated. To rush through this park is both unfeasible and against the laws of nature.

The irony is not lost on me that I am sitting here, reading an article about multi-tasking.

And this just in: multi-tasking hurts our ability to concentrate.

Isn’t it astonishing, the revelations available to us from an ordinary park bench?  If only I could read the article on my iphone.  Then I could forward it to all my friends who have a problem with this sort of thing.

(And you are thinking, or, at least, I would be thinking, were I reading this blog, what kind of tormented soul reads an article about multi-tasking while sitting on a park bench in arguably the most beautiful and laid back part of the world, and why, oh why, if he needs to process all of this, does he do so with such long rambling sentences?)

So.

Back to the park bench.

How torn we have become.  Our craving for a little pinch of technological (or other preoccupying diversion) snuff.  Yes, indeed.  Imagine the flow (or stimuli) of the information we accrue like some kind of mental and emotional mortgage account.  Only now, with the flood of information the account has destabilized (the same affect derivatives had on our national financial mortgage markets).  Have I lost you yet?  Here’s the deal: we welcome the flow, because juggling email and phone texts and web searches and phone calls, actually provides a “dopamine squirt.” (And yes, that is what scientists call it.  To me it sounds more like a breath mint.  But then, I’m not a scientist.)

Translation in English: it feels good.  Really good.

Additional repercussion: it is addictive.

But then, deep down, we all already knew that.  So what’s the point in reading an article about something I already knew?  (Especially given the sign that prohibits any “industrious” behavior while loitering.)

Since you are reading this on a computer (or iphone or a newer toy), the question is worth asking; is this a good addiction or bad?  Coffee is addictive, but I’m not going to give it up.  So is golf.  And God told me to keep playing.

Here’s what I learned in the article.  In 2008, we consumed 3 times the amount of information every day as people did in 1960.  It’s as if our brains are hit with a fire hydrant of data (choices, information, and decisions) every single day.

The article tells the story about a man consumed (you know, email at the breakfast and dinner table).  His wife says, “It seems like he can no longer be fully in the moment.”

Well.  That is our brain on computers.  Like it our not.

Do we throw it all away?  Of course not.

But it wouldn’t hurt to give even our machines and toys, a Sabbath.  The permission to tell ourselves, or our kids, “the TV and computer are asleep today.”

And while they are asleep, it’s a good day to go sit in the park.

I’m less interested in why we’re here.  I’m wholly devoted to while we’re here. Erika Harris