I was diagnosed with add when I was younger. I slipped the ritalin pills in the trash can after just trying a few of them. My grades improved and respect from others increased, but my self respect withered along with my cherished daydreams. I knew society would see it as a bad choice, but to me it just made sense and I figured the only way I'll know for sure is to take the unsure road, without ritalin.
While we're seeing how my life long experiment turns out, I've decided to take on another experiment. Instead of using two or three browsers with three to ten tabs and a few other useful programs running in the background, I'm going to start writing articles, doing research (aka self-teaching), and working on creative projects with only one program running at a time.
I currently have eight tabs open in my Mozilla FireFox browser, and six tabs open in Opera. To write this article though, I've mentally blocked them out to the point that I forgot they were open until I just now wanted to assess my current situation to project my future situation.
Trying to remain humble, I'm testing the theory of another against my own (that multitasking is OK, though I have occasionally had sharp head pains and my vision has randomly blurred). I read the theory on a website with pop-ups, Why the Google Generation Isn't as Smart as it Thinks and I excerpt from it to capture the theme:
"Meyer says there is evidence that people in chronically distracted jobs are, in early middle age, appearing with the same symptoms of burn-out as air traffic controllers. They might have stress-related diseases, even irreversible brain damage. But the damage is not caused by overwork, it’s caused by multiple distracted work."
It's elaborated that multitasking is the problem and goes further to say that the new generation can't even read a long article anymore. I was actually so into the article that I hadn't given much attention to how long it was, but that statement made me aware and reading that article became like watching a clock, slow and mundane. So ironically, I didn't finish reading that rather lengthy article.
Nevertheless, I was still intrigued by the writing. So I'll experiment and we'll see if limiting my multitasking and increasing concentation helps me create better works within the next three days. I feel unfortunately confident that I wont be producing more works, but hopefully better works. I think that's what multitasking is all about... Time-saving and that's why many people don't read full articles... I think every generation is guilty of it though, don't many people figure out for the most part, "the rest of the story" before they read many articles? And if it were important enough, wouldn't they finish it?
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