How the attention economy makes my life miserable | |
Puiblishing date: 2025-06-16 17:30:00 +0200 | |
I just read Ploum's essay 'A Society That Lost Focus' [1] in | |
my lunch break right on the first day when I got back to | |
work from vacation. I was finding that essay on Mastodon | |
while searching for the `#tilde` tag; and even though I was | |
discovering the toot in a the most non-invasive way possible | |
there a way to many other distraction. | |
There's MS Teams, my personal nemesis, with two incarnations | |
on two different tenants, begging for attention, but only | |
one may be active; so the loser sends emails about missed | |
notifications. There are emails. And other emails. And push | |
notifications on your desktop, on your phone. | |
I should be working on that architecture from that long | |
workshop from before my vacation, but I need to catch up | |
with all these backlogs.l | |
There's a call. Coleague asks me about something. No, I did | |
not read that email just yet. | |
An instant message. If that bug is resolved? What bug? The | |
one assigned to you for triage. | |
Note, these are just examples from an average day at work, | |
where you're not exposed to regular social networks, | |
websites and whatnot.l | |
It's the corporate treadmill, and as long as we do not | |
change the work culture, there's not much you can do. Right? | |
RIGHT? | |
Well. One *could* work out some passive-aggressive | |
strategies to mitigate all the troubles and claim back your | |
time, so that you finally get work done again. Simply turn | |
of all the applications, right? Ignore incoming emails? Set | |
Teams to do-not-disturb? | |
But can you even work with all these distractions? In my | |
line of work I write documentation, specifications. I build | |
upon the work of others. It's absolutely nothing I create | |
from scratch, it's not even possible. I must be able to look | |
up standard documents on the Internet, check the Intranet | |
and emails what prior work has been done in this field. | |
Research simply is not possible without having access to the | |
all the online repositories and archives. | |
...and while I was writing this I caught myself peeking at | |
an xterm running an IRC client. | |
And looking at that Mastodon client! | |
OK, I think I got my bearings now. Only got Ploum's article | |
open - running w3m, in an xterm - some background music, in | |
cmus - and this editor where I'm writing it. | |
So what is it what I could do to claim my concentration back | |
without falling into the trap of "this magical piece of | |
nu-tec will solve your problems"? I am thinking real hard | |
about this for years now, but now that I am back from | |
vacation and straight back into the meat grinder, the whole | |
question became ever more pressing. So let me see if I can | |
commit myself to some tactics I just pulled out of my butt, | |
without thinking too hard about it. | |
* Let's see if I can make it through one work week with | |
checking emails only twice a day. Keep MUA closed | |
otherwise. | |
* Try not to actively engage in any chat conversation | |
unless someone actively pings me, because my support is | |
really needed. I can't simply close Teams | |
* Keep all applications closed which are not needed to do | |
the task your're currently working on. | |
* Make regular breaks. | |
* When working, try not to research ad-hoc. Collect | |
questions and split up working between active writing and | |
research. Imagine the research stage like a walk to the | |
stacks or the library. | |
Will that work? Beats me. But I will do my very bloody best | |
to keep applications or people stealing my attention. I now | |
have the chance to work on it. I am already working with an | |
stripped down environment, but it turns out that this didn't | |
help me from falling into the same trap again. Perhaps it's | |
just about discipline. Let's see. | |
Footnotes: | |
[1]: A Society That Lost Focus | |
[2]: TUI for Mastodon with vim inspired keys | |
.. | |
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Gophered by Gophernicus/3.1.1 on Raspbian/12 armv7l |