The Distraction Addiction: Getting the Information You Need and the Communication You Want, Without Enraging Your Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Destroying Your Soul

Overview

The question of our time: can we reclaim our lives in an age that feels busier and more distracting by the day?

We've all found ourselves checking email at the dinner table, holding our breath while waiting for Outlook to load, or sitting hunched in front of a screen for an hour longer than we intended.

Mobile devices and the web have invaded our lives, and this is a big idea book that addresses one of the biggest questions of our age: can we ...

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The Distraction Addiction: Getting the Information You Need and the Communication You Want, Without Enraging Your Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Destroying Your Soul

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This item will be available on August 20, 2013.
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More About This Book

Overview

The question of our time: can we reclaim our lives in an age that feels busier and more distracting by the day?

We've all found ourselves checking email at the dinner table, holding our breath while waiting for Outlook to load, or sitting hunched in front of a screen for an hour longer than we intended.

Mobile devices and the web have invaded our lives, and this is a big idea book that addresses one of the biggest questions of our age: can we stay connected without diminishing our intelligence, attention spans, and ability to really live? Can we have it all?

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, a renowned Stanford technology guru, says yes. THE DISTRACTION ADDICTION is packed with fascinating studies, compelling research, and crucial takeaways. Whether it's breathing while Facebook refreshes, or finding creative ways to take a few hours away from the digital crush, this book is about the ways to tune in without tuning out.

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
In this practical guide to better, more “contemplative computing,” Pang, a historian of technology, teaches readers a valuable set of skills to better enable them to deal with an increasing reliance on ever-more intrusive and distracting forms of mobile technology. Along the way, the author provides an elegant tour through current neuroscience and an examination of the nature of attention to find better ways to handle our contemporary digital mediascape. In seven extended chapters, Pang assesses attention-focusing tools (e.g., aesthetically minimal word-processing software like WriteRoom and Internet blockers like Freedom), as well as strategies like meditation and scheduled “Sabbaths” away from stimulation like e-mail, push notifications, and other calls for attention. Pang’s methods will be familiar to readers of other time-management manifestos, but he successfully renders them concrete, practical, and contemporary. His history of technology is also fascinating, drawing from sources far removed from the digital sphere. Pang’s tome is a valuable resource for anyone seeking to take control of his or her digital life, and it’s a great primer on the interplay between mind and tech. Agent: Zoë Pagnamenta, Pagnamenta Agency. (Aug. 20)
From the Publisher
"A wise, urbane, funny, and delightfully deep book. This book is about much more than distraction and addiction in the smartphone age. It's about living life wholly and fully by paying deep, thoughtful attention to our tools and our bodies, and to the people we love. This book speaks to modern times, but its message is timeless." -- Michael Chorost, author of World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the Internet

"Does technology rule you? Or do you rule your technology? The Distraction Addiction is a how-to guide for staying sane, balanced, and intentional in an age of constant digital distraction. If you want your phone, facebook, email, and all the rest to make your life richer without making it more scattered, this is the book for you." -- Ramez Naam, author of The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet

"Time starved? Distracted by the immediate? Tossing in an ocean of swirling information? No landfall in sight? Need a lodestar; a pilot, perhaps a Zen master? Turn to Alex Soojung-Kim Pang: he has charted these waters. With Pang's help you can surprise yourself. The Distraction Addiction is an intelligent, entertaining and essential guide to navigation in our techno-times." -- Peter C. Whybrow, Director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, and author of American Mania: When More is Not Enough

"The Distraction Addiction is guaranteed to distract and provoke us from the normal clichés of the day. It stretches our understanding of technological affordances and the extended mind, bringing into reality what we usually think of philosophically. Read this book and be surprised and delighted by its deeply humanist sensibilities." -- John Seely Brown, co-author of The Social Life of Information

Kirkus Reviews
How to combat the crush of digital information available today. With the invention of personal computers and smartphones, the world of information and updates from friends and family is just a split second away. "People who spend all day with computers used to be called hackers," writes Stanford and Oxford visiting scholar Pang. "Today, that's all of us." This overwhelming volume of information has prompted what many call a "distraction addiction," where everything feels urgent and in need of your immediate attention; this situation usually results in ineffective multitasking. Pang offers simple techniques to create a more peaceful and productive life. From taking mindful breaths to using meditation, the author focuses on the need to step away from the screen, suggesting walks to recharge an overly tired brain, like Charles Darwin did on his Sandwalk, what he called "his thinking path." Pang analyzes computer programs that effectively disconnect one from the Internet, forcing users to concentrate on the task at hand rather than clicking at every ping of their inbox. He suggests monitoring email and social media use, writing down the frequency, length of time and physical location where each site is checked, then eliminating those sites that take up time but provide little constructive feedback. For those willing to go one step farther, Pang recommends a digital Sabbath, one day a week when any or all screen-related activities are turned off in order to reclaim face-to-face relationships, start new hobbies and engage in interactions with the outside world. By following these methods of self-control, readers can better utilize the tools at hand and follow the buzz on the airwaves while still feeling in control of their lives. A well-researched program to help reclaim personal downtime from the inundation of cyberinformation.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780316208260
  • Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
  • Publication date: 8/20/2013
  • Pages: 304

Meet the Author

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang has spent the past twenty years studying people, technology, and the worlds they make. A professional futurist with a PhD in the history of science, Pang is a former Microsoft Research fellow, a visiting scholar at Stanford and Oxford universities, and a senior consultant at Strategic Business Insights, a Silicon Valley-based think tank. Pang's writings have appeared in Scientific American, American Scientist, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review, as well as in many academic publications.

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