Wednesday, October 13, 2010

I apparently have the attention span of a...

So I’m pretty sure the internets have destroyed my concentration. Have you ever sat down to try and write something (for school, for work, something real) and not had the internet? I know, it’s a horrifying/foreign concept, but bear with me. I’ve been doing this a lot, since I like to go to the library to write up anything in Spanish. I won’t ever take my modem there because the computer has viruses and I don’t want many people knowing I have the modem anyways. Originally, I also thought this would work to my advantage since I figured it would help me concentrate better. I thought it would be great to be able to just write without having to check a million different interweb things every five seconds.

Silly, naïve me. I found my brain doesn’t focus nearly as well as I thought it would, especially when I’m writing in Spanish. I find myself doing anything to distract myself in between sentences or give myself undeserved breaks after writing a paragraph. I go to other files to check on stuff I don’t need to, I play stupid Windows games, I switch to writing things in English just for a minute. When I’m writing in English, it’s a little better – I get on rolls and don’t like to interrupt myself and I can focus for just a bit longer. But it’s still there, this need to only work for short moments and then do something else to break it up. It’s a really ugly habit.

I’m going to blame the internets for this, though they’re not completely at fault since there is a difference when I’m writing in English. But I’m wondering if people who used to do a lot of writing on the computer before having the internet have noticed a difference? Like, were you able to concentrate for longer back then but now find yourself checking Google Reader or Facebook statuses every few minutes? Or do we think it’s just my terribly-connected generation? Or is it just me? You let me know after you finish posting your Tweet and I’ll reply after my seventh game of Hearts.

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