Attention Deficit Disorder

Fred Harburg

Increasingly common stories of traffic accidents involving people “texting” while driving add poignancy to the epidemic of fractured attention in our world. There is a presumption that multitasking is a necessary, even admirable skill in our hyper-speed age, but nothing could be farther from the truth.

As an Air Force instructor pilot one of the first myths I had to dispel for aspiring young pilot candidates was the idea that good pilots are multitaskers. Research supports a different conclusion. The best pilots are excellent at rapid sequencing. They give full and complete attention to a visual indication, an aural signal, or a kinesthetic sensation, interpret it accurately, act on it effectively, and then move to the next appropriate point of focus. Scientists from the NASA Ames Research Center conclude that attempting to split attention is deadly for a pilot. 

What is true for pilots and drivers is also true for those who have the privilege and the personal or professional responsibility for dealing with other human beings. The blinding pace of our world makes it tempting to split the signal rather than to give our full attention to the people with whom we are engaged at any given moment, but the consequence of doing so can wreck a relationship just as it does a car or a plane.

In The Practice of the Presence of God, a seventeenth-century monk named Lawrence describes the idea of giving full attention to his relationship with God. Brother Lawrence explains that he “decided to give all to gain all . . . adoring God as often as I could, keeping my mind in his holy presence and recalling it as often as it wandered. I had no little difficulty in this exercise, but I kept on despite all difficulties and was not worried or distressed when I was involuntarily distracted. . . . The effect of repeating these acts is that they become more habitual and the presence of God becomes, as it were, more natural.” He summarized this mindfulness of God as being “an interior gaze on God which should always be quiet, humble, and loving.”

Michael Mason acknowledged the deep wisdom of Lawrence and extrapolated it to relationships between people. In his book, Practicing the Presence of People, Mason encourages us to honor others by giving them our full attention and turning our interior gaze on God’s handiwork in them. He asks us to tune out the noisy chatter of our distractions, preoccupations, and personal anxieties and tune in to a consuming appreciation for the full value of those with whom we are engaged.

This is the antithesis of paying lip service to one conversation while simultaneously answering a text message or e-mail on a mobile device. Lest we think this is merely a generational divide, the research shows that while younger people may be more accustomed to and technically adept at multitasking, they are no better at simultaneously handling two neural stimuli than their less tech-savvy elders. Yet this split-signal behavior is now so pervasive in the business world that many do not even see it as the enormously rude act which it is.

Most of us confuse “busy” with “important” and fail to see that we find our own significance most powerfully when we recognize the infinite value that God places in those around us. I’m an amateur at being fully present for others and letting them have the spotlight, but I have experienced enough of it to taste its rich reward and to be convinced that when I split the signal we both lose.  

Fred Harburg is a Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum.

10 Responses (comments are closed) • Provocations, Character and Ethics, Science and Technology, Wed 21 Nov 2007