You're Distracted. This Professor Can Help. · You're Distracted. This Professor Can Help. By Marc Parry Seattle Matthew Ryan Williams for The Chronicle Before each class session,

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March 24, 2013

You're Distracted.This Professor Can Help.By Marc ParrySeattle

Matthew Ryan Williams for TheChronicleBefore each class session, DavidLevy leads his students in a fewminutes of meditation.

o complete her homework assignment, Meran Hill neededtotal concentration. The University of Washington senior shutthe blinds in her studio apartment. She turned off the music.

She took a few deep breaths.

Then she plunged into the task: Spend 15 minutes doing e-mail.Only e-mail, and nothing else.

Soon enough, though, a familiar craving bubbled up. For somepeople, the rabbit hole of Internet distraction begins with catvideos. For Ms. Hill, who calls herself "a massive weather geek," itstarts with a compulsion to check conditions in outer space.

As Ms. Hill plowed through e-mails, the voice beckoned: If I couldonly just leave and go to Spaceweather.com ...

But the assignment had her trapped. After a while, she says, staying

You're Distracted. This Professor Can Help. - Technology - The... http://chronicle.com/article/Youre-Distracted-This/138079/

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on e-mail felt more natural.

The e-mail drill was one of numerous mind-training exercises in aunique class designed to raise students' awareness about how theyuse their digital tools. Colleges have experimented with short-termsocial-media blackouts in the past. But Ms. Hill's course,"Information and Contemplation," goes way further. Participantsscrutinize their use of technology: how much time they spend withit, how it affects their emotions, how it fragments their attention.They watch videos of themselves multitasking and write guidelinesfor improving their habits. They also practice meditation—duringclass—to sharpen their attention.

Their professor, David M. Levy, sees these techniques as the templatefor a grass-roots movement that could spur similar investigationson other campuses and beyond. Mr. Levy hopes to open a freshwindow on the polarized cultural debate about Internet distractionand information abundance.

At its extreme, that debate plays out in the writing of authors whomthe critic Adam Gopnik has dubbed the Never-Betters and the Better-Nevers. Those camps duke it out over whether the Internet willunleash vast reservoirs of human potential (Clay Shirky) or destroyour capacity for concentration and contemplation (Nicholas Carr).

On college campuses, meanwhile, educators struggle to managewhat the Stanford University multitasking researcher Clifford Nassdescribes as a radical shift in the nature of attention. Mr. Nass, wholives in a freshman dormitory as a "dorm parent," sees that shift onstudents' screens. They write papers while toggling among YouTubeand Facebook and Spotify. They text and talk on smartphones. Theyhang out in lounges where the TV is on.

Amid this scampering attention, some fear for the future oflong-form reading. That was a theme of a keynote speech at thisyear's conference of the American Historical Association by thegroup's departing president, William J. Cronon, a professor at theUniversity of Wisconsin at Madison. Speaking to a ballroom ofbook-worshiping professors, the environmental historian expressedhis anxiety about what he called "the Anna Karenina problem."

Within 20 years, he wondered, will students manage to muster thedozens of hours of attention necessary to get through a lengthynovel like Tolstoy's 19th-century classic? If not, what does thatmean for works of history that are even harder to read?

When I ask Mr. Cronon what prompted him to stress that issue, hepoints to an encounter that illustrates the peril to the discipline ofhistory:

A young man came up to him after a lecture he gave at anotheruniversity. The talk had presented the themes of a 500- to800-page book that Mr. Cronon is writing about the history of asmall Wisconsin town, called Portage, from the glacier to thepresent. The young man told the historian how much he liked thelecture, but lamented that he could never read the book. Lookingsad and ashamed, he said he had never read anything that lengthy.

But Mr. Levy, a professor in the Information School at University ofWashington, sees a problem with many discussions about whattechnology is doing to our minds.

"So many of those debates fail to even acknowledge or realize thatwe can educate ourselves, even in the digital era, to be moreattentive," he says. "What's crucial is education."


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The education of Mr. Levy's students begins with meditation: ashort session at the start of every class.

I visited his classroom one recent Thursday to watch theritual unfold.

Fourteen students—tech-savvy people working toward information-related degrees—join Mr. Levy at a series of desks arranged in asquare. Shortly after 3:30 p.m., the professor removes his watch.He picks up a bowl-shaped bell. He pings the bell three times,slowly, with a short brown stick.

Mr. Levy, 62, settles into a dignified stillness, honed over decadesof practice. Each year he travels to Mexico and to Bellingham,Wash., for weeklong retreats where participants meditate insilence, morning to night. A practicing Jew, he also withdraws fromtechnology for a weekly Sabbath, a period of staying offline thatlasts from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. If all this makesyou picture a crunchy hippie, don't. With his slight smile and sadeyes, gentle voice and sensible sweater, Mr. Levy comes acrossmore like a Manhattan psychiatrist.

As the chimes from his bell fade, the classroom fills with silence.One student sits cross-legged with her palms facing up. Anotherrests her chin, prayerlike, on clasped hands. Another stares with abemused expression. The only sounds come from outside—thesquawk of a bird, the bang of a door.

Meran Hill"It seems so simple tojust observe how youdo e-mail or observehow you multitaskbetween two things.But when you take avideo of yourselfdoing it and thenreview it later, younotice all kinds ofweird habits you have.We’re reallyunconscious when weuse technology. Thisclass is helping bringthat consciousnessback—of just howzoned out I am."


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Michael Conyers“When I come intothat classroom, I havea lot of things on mymind. And often whenI’ve been taught in thepast, I wouldn’t beopen to the ideas,because I was stillstuck in my way ofthinking before I gotinto class. Meditationgives you a resetbutton. I’m clearingmy mind so I can givemy full attention towhat is going to behappening next."

Athea Merredyth“It’s not that I’m notcomfortable withtechnology. What I’vediscovered from thisclass, and carving outthat time to really lookat my habits, is that Ifeel like I can’t meetother people’sexpectations of beingtimely."


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AndreaMichelbach“Facebook, beingback in grad school,it’s been a real issue.Because it’s such adistraction. But it’salso a place where myclass has so muchcommunication that Ican’t miss it. So it’snot just how it affectsour academics. It’slike, if I’m notengaging in this, am Inot being as friendlyto my classmates as Icould be? Or notbuilding as much of arelationship as I couldbe?"All Photos by MatthewRyan Williams for TheChronicle

Those who happen to glance into this seminar, in Room 420 ofMary Gates Hall, might wonder whether the students had fallenasleep.

Just the opposite: Meditation sharpens their focus. The practice, asMr. Levy teaches it, involves repeatedly bringing your attentionback to your breathing as the mind wanders away. Think of it likelifting weights. Just as you can build up your biceps by doing reps,he says, meditation can strengthen attention.

There's nothing novel about this. As Mr. Levy has written, manycultures, over thousands of years, have developed techniques to stillthe mind and cultivate attention. Scientists like Jon Kabat-Zinn andtechnologists like Google's Chade-Meng Tan have broughtmeditation into medicine and business, and now Mr. Levy is doinglikewise in education.

His methods are secular but inspired by Buddhist tradition.Buddhism 101: Suffering is an inescapable part of life. You canavoid some of it. Much angst stems from failing to be aligned withthe present moment, as the mind cycles through anxieties aboutpast and future. Meditation trains the mind to focus on the present.Mr. Levy points out that other traditions besides Buddhism havereached similar conclusions. Ancient Greek schools of philosophy,


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for example, taught exercises designed to bring the student intofuller engagement with the present moment, according to PierreHadot, a French philosopher.

At first some students find it weird to meditate beside theirclassmates. "I'm sitting next to this person," says Ms. Hill. "Wecan't say anything to each other. We just made awkward eyecontact. What now?" It gets weirder. In addition to meditating atdesks, students also practice walking meditation in the halls, which,as Ms. Hill jokes, probably appears to bystanders "a bit like thezombie apocalypse."

But meditation works like an eraser that rubs out the mentalchatter you carry up the stairs to class, says another student,Michael J. Conyers. "It opens me up to where now I can give my fullattention to this guy."

"This guy"—Mr. Levy—is one of the more unusual charactersthinking about education and technology.

After attending New York's Stuyvesant High School and DartmouthCollege, he earned a Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford in 1979,specializing in artificial intelligence. But AI's rational,computational vision of humanity felt limited. He dropped it andmoved to London to study calligraphy and bookbinding.

Mr. Levy eventually found a base to pursue his interests in old andnew technologies: Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. In the 1970s,the think tank had developed the first fully networked personalcomputer. As a researcher there in the 80s and 90s, Mr. Levyfocused on the transition from paper to digital documents.

But as digital tools gained momentum in the 90s, he started towonder whether technologies sold as tools of connection were alsodisconnecting people from themselves and one another.Cellphones, e-mail, Internet—all of it accelerated life. Thatcontrasted with the stillness and focus Mr. Levy cultivated inmeditation.

How could people live balanced lives in the middle of thesetechnologies?

After Mr. Levy moved to University of Washington, in 2001, thatwas the question he took into the classroom.

or his students, though, some of the most interesting resultshappen outside of class, as they use Mr. Levy's methods toanalyze and change their often unconscious tech habits.

On the second floor of Trabant, a coffee shop near campus, Ms. Hillpops open her MacBook Air to show me how the process works.

She loves technology but would like to be better at settingboundaries, which is difficult in part because she's so busy. Inaddition to pursuing a double major in psychology and informatics,she interns for a consulting-and-marketing company and works asa teaching assistant.

Her iPhone, almost an extension of her hand, constantly beckons.When she first got a smartphone, she and her friends would go outto lunch and sit there in silence, glued to their gadgets.

"I started to realize that it was really making me sad," says Ms. Hill,who has short brown hair, a hoop-shaped nose ring, and a tendencyto pantomime her thoughts with her hands as she speaks. "I wasinvolved in all these cool social circles on Facebook, but it was solonely. I would get all of my social energy out of a computer."


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She managed to dial down that Facebook addiction, but sheremained an obsessive e-mail checker—until Mr. Levy's classstarted to change her habits. It began with an assignment thatrequired students to spend 15 minutes to half an hour each dayobserving and logging their e-mail behavior. The idea, anoutgrowth of meditation, is to note what happens in the mind andbody.

Can they notice the initial impulse to check e-mail? What are theythinking and feeling at that point? What emotional reactions dothey have the moment they set eyes on the inbox? How does theirposture and breathing change as they e-mail?

After observing their own behavior for a week, students write a two-to three-page reflection on what they saw.

In the process, they tend to discover what works for them. Theylearn how strong their attention is at different times. They see howe-mail provokes pleasure, anxiety, even hatred.

Ms. Hill was flabbergasted to find out how frequently she checkede-mail. She checked it right after waking up. She checked it ridingthe bus, crossing campus, climbing stairs, sitting in class, eatingdinner. She checked it up to 25 times a day, just on her phone. Foreach new message, her phone vibrated. It stressed her out. Oftenthe alerts concerned unimportant messages from e-mail lists.

She was reacting to robots.

Then came another assignment: "e-mail meditation." This meantconcentrating only on e-mail for 15 minutes or so at a stretch. Noanswering the phone. No texting. No checking the weather in space.

When the mind wandered, students were instructed to refocus theirattention on the e-mail, just as they bring their attention back tothe breath in traditional meditation.

Each student wrote up personal e-mail guidelines. Ms. Hill realizedthat she hadn't been paying close enough attention to importantmessages as she tapped out one rapid-fire reply after another. Sheremoved her university e-mail account from her phone, so itwouldn't tempt her, and started handling e-mail in batches severaltimes a day.

"For me, that type of hyperfocus really worked," she says of thee-mail meditation. "If I'm just constantly dipping out of my own lifeto go check my e-mail, and not giving my life or the e-mail fullfocus, it's almost like a waste of time."

On her laptop, Ms. Hill opens up software called Camtasia to showme another behavior she's trying to improve: multitasking.

Camtasia records what happens on her screen as Ms. Hill uses thecomputer. Meanwhile, hidden from view, it also deploys her Webcam to film her: her posture; her expression; and her physicalenvironment, like the acoustic guitar and green couch visible overher shoulder.

Mr. Levy's students use the software to record 15-minutemultitasking sessions. It's the first of multiple exercises aimed atteaching them to multitask more mindfully, by noticing the desireto switch activities and deciding whether to follow it.

When students play back the Camtasia recording, they see whatwas happening on their screens with their own faces displayed in acorner. They watch themselves flit among Words With Friends,e-mail, Words With Friends, Spotify, Words With Friends, and that


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goofy video of a cat rolling up against a sake bottle.

Some are disturbed to observe that they got so distracted theyforgot to work on the main task they had set out to accomplish, likereading an article.

Sample Experiment

Ms. Hill clicks play.

"Look at my face—I do not look happy," she says. "My posture islike this." She slouches her shoulders, aping what she sees in thevideo. The video shows her switching among e-mail, the Web, andPDFs. Three minutes in, her phone chirps. A new text message!

She leans back, smiling.

"The emotional quality of what I'm doing on the computer screen isso, like, negative," she says. "And then what's happening on mycellphone screen is so incredibly positive. It's like thisback-and-forth thing, almost like I'm switching rooms, you know?"

In the recording, another text message interrupts her. And another.

That happens four times over the 15-minute session.

Ms. Hill sips her tea and giggles at the video.

"I don't know how I get anything done," she says.

ll this breathing and self-observation may sound goofy, butMr. Levy grounds it in science.

Last year he and a team of colleagues reported the results of aNational Science Foundation-backed experiment that combinedmeditation with multitasking.

The subjects were human-resource managers. Some got meditationtraining, and others did not. They were then asked to completetasks, such as scheduling a meeting, amid a barrage ofinterruptions from e-mail, instant messages, phone calls, andknocks on the door.

The results: Those who had received meditation training were lessfragmented in their work, switching tasks less frequently andspending more time on each one. They also showed less stress andbetter memory. The experiment was the latest in a growing pile ofneuroscientific studies to find that meditation may improveemotional regulation and attention.


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Other research highlights the cognitive costs of not payingattention. Ulrich Mayr, a professor of psychology at the Universityof Oregon, studies multitasking. When Stanford convened aconference on that subject in 2009, he emphasized that"multitasking is actually rapid task switching, since the humanbrain does just one thing at a time."

In a phone interview, I ask him to elaborate. Mr. Mayr offers theexample of watching television while doing homework from atextbook. While you're trying to follow a story on television, youwon't be doing your homework, he says, and while doing yourhomework, you won't get the TV story. Simple as that.

What's more, he says, you pay a price for switching—with momentsof mental "dead time" unproductive for either task. For everyactivity, your brain must reconfigure itself to do a constellation ofthings required for the type of task. Keeping track of a TV show, forinstance, involves activating brain areas that deal with visual inputsas well as consulting long-term memory to retrieve what you knowabout the characters. Want to switch to math problems? A differentset of brain areas must come together. And writing the equationson paper for homework takes yet another set for motor output.

All of that carries implications for teaching. The cost of classroommultitasking, he says, can be a failure to learn.

Say a professor presents new concepts. To understand the ideas,students need to link them to things they already know, creating anetwork of associations that Mr. Mayr describes as "a richknowledge structure." That happens only if they pay attention andthink about the lesson.

If a student listens to the professor with one ear while surfingFacebook, Mr. Mayr says, "I'm 100 percent certain that that criticalprocess of creating new knowledge structures is not happening inthe student's head."

What's tricky is that someone who does surf the Web whilelistening to a lecture will very likely have the impression of doingjust fine, Mr. Mayr says. That's because our minds lay a trap. Allcontent in long-term memory is represented in two ways: "as asense of familiarity on the one hand, and whether or not you trulyunderstand it."

People often mistake familiarity for understanding. They open thetextbook after getting home from a lecture, and they recognize thematerial. They think: I get this. Then they take a test—and bomb it.

Another researcher, Mr. Nass, of Stanford, has found that peoplewho chronically multitask are less able to focus and worse atmanaging working memory. They're also worse at switchingbetween tasks.

"The thing that one would assume is at the heart of multitasking,they're actually quite bad at," Mr. Nass says. "It shocked the hell outof me."

Mr. Mayr, however, cautions against drawing the conclusion thatmultitasking weakens attention. If anything, he says, it's probablythe opposite: People whose attention doesn't function well in thefirst place are probably most susceptible to the lure of distractingstimuli.

The big question—whether multitasking changes how our brainswork—remains unanswered, he says. That's because it's difficult tostudy. Ideally you would run a controlled experiment over several


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years, with one group of kids multitasking as usual and a controlgroup of kids not exposed to those distractions. But it's basicallyimpossible to create that control group.

Mr. Levy, meanwhile, is encouraging other colleges to bring age-oldcontemplative practices to their wired campuses. (He isn't the onlyone: The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, a nonprofitgroup, has for years supported such efforts in higher education.) Hehas visited other campuses, giving public lectures, running trainingworkshops for faculty and staff, and meeting with students todiscuss their online behavior.

Back in his own class, Mr. Levy pings the bell once more to signalthe end of meditation and the start of discussion. Students rub theireyes. They shift positions. One cracks his back.

The students begin to debate a series of readings on multitasking.These include a feature in Scientific American Mind about thediscovery of "Supertaskers"—a tiny sliver of humanity whomultitask with ease—as well as a report from that 2009 multitaskingseminar at Stanford.

The Stanford report strikes notes of urgency. Mr. Levy points hisstudents to one section in particular: a plea for guidance to help thepublic handle its concerns about the effects of multitasking oneducation and family life.

"I don't think that we have to just wait for the longitudinal studiesin order to figure some stuff out," the professor tells the students."What we're doing in this course is figuring some things out forourselves."

Information and Contemplation: a Reading List

A selection of readings from a course taught by David M. Levy atthe University of Washington

Introduction to Contemplative Practice

Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation inEveryday Life, by Jon Kabat-Zinn (pages 3-19)

Alfred W. Kaszniak, "Contemplative Pedagogy: Perspectives FromCognitive and Affective Science," in Contemplative Approaches toLearning and Inquiry Across DisciplinesSmart or Stupid?

Adam Gopnik, "The Information: How the Internet Gets Inside Us,"The New Yorker (2011)

Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More FromTechnology and Less From Each Other (2011; pages 151-170)

Jane McGonigal, Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Betterand How They Can Change the World (2011; introduction andconclusion)Attention

Warren Thorngate, "On Paying Attention" (1988) in Recent Trendsin Theoretical Psychology (1993; pages 247-263)

Antoine Lutz, Heleen A. Slagter, John D. Dunne, and Richard J.Davidson, "Attention Regulation and Monitoring in Meditation,"Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2008; pages 163-169)E-mail

Stephen R. Barley, Debra E. Meyerson, and Stine Grodal, "E-Mailas Source and Symbol of Stress," Organization Science (2010)


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with your Chronicle account: Don't have an account? Create one now.Or log in using one of these alternatives:

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Linda Stone, "Just Breathe: Building the Case for Email Apnea,"Huffington Post (2008)The Body

Galen Cranz, The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design(1998; chapters 3-4)

"Is All That Sitting Really Killing Us?," The New York Times, "Roomfor Debate" (2010)

Emotional Regulation

Chade-Meng-Tan, Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path toAchieving Success, Happiness and World Peace (2012; Meng, as heis known, founded Google's mindfulness course, "Search InsideYourself.")Education

David M. Levy, "No Time to Think: Reflections on InformationTechnology and Contemplative Scholarship," Ethics andInformation Technology (2007)Multitasking

Claudia Wallis, "The Impacts of Media Multitasking on Children'sLearning and Development" (2010; report from research seminar,Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop)

Victor M. González and Gloria Mark, "'Constant, Constant, Multi-TaskingCraziness': Managing Multiple Working Spheres" (2004; paperpresented at Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems)

David L. Strayer and Jason M. Watson, "Supertaskers and theMultitasking Brain" (2012), Scientific American Mind (pages22-29)

David M. Levy, Jacob O. Wobbrock, Alfred W. Kaszniak, andMarilyn Ostergren, "The Effects of Mindfulness Meditation Training onMultitasking in a High-Stress Information Environment" (2012;paper presented at Graphics Interface Conference)Unplugging

David M. Levy, "More, Faster, Better: Governance in an Age ofOverload, Busyness, and Speed" (2006; First Monday)

Judith Shulevitz, The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Orderof Time (2010)

"The Unplugged Challenge," The New York Times (2010)

Sabbath Manifesto (Web site)

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kent_tophat 5 days ago


11 of 18 3/29/13 9:43 AM

Fantastic article. It is refreshing to see this kind of research being done. I started mindfulnessmeditations in undergrad (9 years ago) and have found it to be one of the best decisions of my life.

My only piece of advice would be this. Don't try to meditate for any specific purpose. If you go inwith a purpose "I want to get better at multitasking", you have missed the point. The point is to sitquietly and watch your thoughts. That's all. This kind of attitude will serve you better as youprogress.

Thank you for the fantastic piece.

Kent

22 people liked this. Like

Interesting article, excellent reading list. Thank you all for enriching my life by bringing insightsand challenging thoughts I need to work through. Focus-Interaction-Entertainment-Relationship-Reflection-Insight-Creation-Rest. All vying for attention and priority. Sometimes the students learnmore from a professor in an example of "centering" than from a semester of books and lectures.Again, thank you for opening this classroom to me.


Excellent reading list? I find student reflections on this a bit more informative than studiesfrom people who are not experiencing the shifts in how reality is constructed first hand. Theunder 25s-if anyone, should be authorities on this. The studies of us oldies about them are puttogether from our warped, print-era perspectives.


If people who aren't a member of a particular group or generation are not allowed tostudy it, then I guess the whole discpline of history is moot.


If those who experience an event are subordinated to the point that their opinionson that event are deemed unimportant due to their age, while the proclamations of"elder scholars" report things like the above post/article, common sense is moot.


This is fascinating. I've been searching ways to help improve my attention after being diagnosedwith ADD during my second quarter of college. It's always been there, but I've been able to workaround it by being a good test-taker and being able to "binge work" at the end of semesters to catchup on work that I'd missed simply through inattention. My study habits sucked and I just assumedI was "bad at school". Although I've been diagnosed, I cannot afford to get screened by myuniversity so that they can issue their "official" diagnosis that will allow me to use my student healthinsurance to get medication I can afford. Thus, I've been looking for alternative therapies forredirecting attention. I'd love to learn more about this guy's studies and what their affects are, andI'm also curious as to whether he's had many ADD students in his class (I imagine so) and what theresults are with them.

David Olson 4 days ago

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Where are the studies that confirm "long form" reading is superior to exposure to the same materialvia tweets, youtube, and facebook? The people studying and writing about this topic seem to befrom a pre-digital age. I suppose this nostalgia will continue a few more years...


The same material? What a laugh. Do you want me to tweet Tolstoy to you, 140 characters at atime?


Most certainly. Storytelling evolves as does the study of it. Academics, as usual, stuck inthe cultural lag...


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Good for her . She worked 258 hours in one month.Did you do that ever .I am glad she found the right place to work .


This is spam; 1000 more were sent to just advertise - not worth a response.


She makes $69 an hour on the computer, but is she really working all that time ordistracted by email, instant messaging, social media, news, and checking the weather inouter space? Maybe she needs to meditate and consider what you call "a few hours"spent on the computer.


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13 of 18 3/29/13 9:43 AM

There are, in fact, many studies showing the value of extended reading (i.e., beyond 140characters at a time and even beyond one paragraph at a time. I can assure you that whatappears to be nostalgia is actually a wake-up call. Being able to use technologies in ameaningful way requires that we not let the machine decide for us how we'll learn, but exploitits capabilities to further our own and develop a repertoire of strategies from which to choose. Being aware of how we use technologies, understanding the downside of that use along withthe benefits, and addressing the potential ethical issues that can occur are all topics ripe fordiscussion and research.


I've been looking for alternative therapies for redirecting attention. ATMEGA64

Like

Just two years ago, I probably would have skipped this article. However, the explosive growth insmart phones (including the fact that I now own one and can speak firsthand of the threats to myconcentration from the little monster), combined with what I see in my own struggling students(such as mistaking the sense of familiarity with one of understanding), has convinced me that weneed to take the bull by the horns and address the fact that our young students need help andguidance if they are to learn everything we have to to teach them. Mastering this technology won'tjust happen to many of these students: I now believe that we have a responsibility to help them.


Teach them . . . how about facilitate their learning?

Like

Great article--! I usually introduce mindfulness techniques and ask students to 'sit' for 1-2 min atthe beginning of class--they 'arrive' and feel better though some of them feel it challenges theirreligion. Calling it mindfulness techniques has helped a bit but not entirely-despite the differencesthey feel. Regarding technology an long reading--hmm--this is an issue but some really interesting ideas onsocial reading are being developed by Bob Stein and his hoard. SocialBook

I thought this might be added to your resource list:acmhe.org is (the) resource for scholars and academics across disciplines using contemplativetechniques in higher education. Association for Contemplative for Higher Education. Regarding


We need more courses like this on campus. A few years ago Cathy Davidson taught a course called"This Is Your Brain on the Internet" her syllabus is at http://hastac.org/blogs/cathy-.... We

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14 of 18 3/29/13 9:43 AM

taught a similar course too called "Are Machines Making Us Stupid?" We reported on it at: http://www.educause.edu/ero/ar...


Great article, should be distributed free to all society!!!

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Fascinating article. I wish I could take the class!

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I've recently become interested in what I call "Technology-Induced ADD." I never had troublefocusing on studies in my undergraduate days, but having gone back to school in both the 90's and2000's, I discovered I couldn't stay on one task for very long. I used a timer to work on mydissertation--not allowed to get up or do anything else for 30 minutes. "Multi-tasking" sounds like away to get many things done at one time, when often the opposite holds true--nothing getscompleted, just pecked at.


In other words "BE HERE NOW." A radical idea.


What? Am I the only person who checked Spaceweather.com two paragraphs after reading aboutit in the article? I CLEARLY need this sort of discipline. Great article.


I wanted to, but figured it was a trap.


I am deeply sympathetic with this piece and would like to give some of the ideas a try. Having saidthat, I'm eager to see more research. I'm especially interested in the changing cognitive landscapeand hope we'll see more on the attention span issue. I'm familiar with a preliminary study aboutonline shopping habits while talking on the phone. Early findings indicate that who "multi-task"tend to spend more. I'm also interested in pedagogical implications.

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15 of 18 3/29/13 9:43 AM

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I recall spending my youth doing homework in front of the television (and look how I turned out!).

The homework that I do nowadays is a bit different - tied to my paycheck - and while I've sat infront of a television while "getting a little work done," I've found that I can't do that sort of multi-tasking for even the drudgiest of tasks any more. As Mr. Mayr states: I either lose track of the story,or I don't get any work done.

But I did do my homework back then, and I did pass the tests. As I've seen several other teenagersin my family do. I wonder if it's a measurement of diminishing brain capacity for adults, or if we'reacknowledging a difference of importance in the task? One only impacts a grade, the other impactsmy pay.


This is certainly an interesting sounding course and approach to studying our technologicallyimpacted behaviors. I found the article too long though and didn't finish it... how did it end?


We all multitask, at what cost? Worth reading till the end...

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This is a great article. Thanks so much for sharing David Levy's wonderful work. I've been teachingand including mindfulness meditations into all my classes for the last 15 years and have seen anamazing impact on the students. The use of Camtasia to observe computer behavior is brilliant!!Awareness is everything.

Darlene Mininni

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Jon Kabat-Zinn advertises workshops and retreats to increase productivity. When you get there,you find out he is teaching mindfulness: "one thing at a time." It does work. Ned Hallowell, MD,coined the term EADD to describe "environmental attention deficit disorder" or what is beinginduced in his patients by too many distractions, and not true ADD.


I was focused on this article until I got to the youtube video embedded in it and ended up watchingmakeup tutorials.

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What does having ear buds attached to your head all the time do to the brain or learning? Howdoes listening with ear buds differ from listening to classical music via recording or radio? I dolisten to classical music while reading "heavy" stuff. It serves as background. (Seriously listening toserious music is another brain mode for me.) I'm using classical music as an example because that'swhat I do. I suspect most people I see wearing them on campus are not listening to classical music! How can they concentrate with the heavy rhythms and shouted lyrics? Has anyone done a study onthe effect of ear buds on learning? (Certainly there have been studies on going deaf using ear buds,but that is another matter.)


Ok this is a great article but I have to wonder how many people immediately stopped reading it togo to spaceweather.com like i did...

like giving ho-hos to a diabetic.


Even before turning to meditation, start by turning off any and all notifications, alerts, beeps,custom ring tones, etc. on your mobile device(s). You will (may) gradually lose the urge to grab thedevice every few seconds or minutes. Carve out time to check-in for messages and updates. Givethat a try. It works wonders. Setup one ring tone or alert for family emergencies.

My other concern with this post, while chock full of interesting tidbits, is that these multitasking oranti-distraction skills need to be taught all the way down to the middle and high school level. Theyare not and most schools are simply just telling students to power-off. Additionally this is not just astudent problem as I've witnessed many higher ed faculty busy texting, browsing the web, takingphone calls during workshops, meetings, and the like.

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Another good read to add to the list includes practical, self-coaching tips: "Organize Your Mind,Organize Your Life" by Hammerness and Moore.

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I read this while sitting in class.

No but seriously, it depends on your job. When I worked with lawyers, you had to check your emailevery 5 minutes. Missing an email from a lawyer who needed you or a client was a big no. Now thatI'm in law school, I'm trying to schedule 2 different negotiation simulations and receive a groupproject that needs edits before it's due in 3 hours.

I wish I could turn it off, but my job/grades depend on my connection. It's nice to meditate beforegoing to sleep, though.


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17 of 18 3/29/13 9:43 AM

Great write-up. A lot of detail and thoughtful consideration of what may be the greatest challenge tointellectualism ever. One caveat however is that this technology is here to stay and is pervasive evenin the classroom. There comes a point of no return at which we must embrace the disruptive anduse it as a vehicle for supporting the kinds of long-form and patient skills that are outlined asimportant in this article. Some suggestions for doing so in this piece: http://bit.ly/101nG6z


I am going to experiment with this methodology. I am ADD and my students' constant attempts tosurreptitiously check their cellphones is very distracting - to me, as well as to them. And no, youcannot tweet Tolstoy - there is shallow knowledge and deep knowledge. The first is not particularlyuseful or translatable into professions.

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You're Distracted. This Professor Can Help. · You're Distracted. This Professor Can Help. By Marc Parry Seattle Matthew Ryan Williams for The Chronicle Before each class session,