Speed Check Ahead

Does your car have a function that warns you about a “speed check ahead”? Somehow there is technology available to identify when a police car is in the area with a radar speed gun. That same technology can warn you when there is a red-light photo sensor at an intersection.

Such warnings serve as helpful reminders to slow down and concentrate on what you are doing. Maneuvering a two-ton object on a road in the midst of crowded streets and highways requires carefulness. Pay attention.

Let this post serve as the same for you and your life. Let this post warn you to slow down just a bit. Concentrate. Be more careful.

Johann Hari studied what he says is the measurable decline in our ability to concentrate as well as people did in the past. While it can be a little vulgar, I recommend you check out Stolen Focus. Part of his conclusions are that we need to slow down and do one thing at a time.* Of course the rub is that the pace of life is frenetic and the options of things to do is endless.

My new job has been interesting. I like the pace (fast). But I have found myself forgetting if I have done this or that. Kiddingly, I have told people that this is not a memory issue but a storage issue. I haven’t really forgotten about having done something; rather, I did it so quickly and moved on to the next thing that the action didn’t have time to get filed away in my memory bank. It’s a storage not a retrieval issue.

Turns out, at least according to Hari, that’s true. He says that the glut of information coming at us, when combined with a frenetic pace of activity and exacerbated by the fact that we are trying to do too many things at once, floods our brain’s capacity to process everything. So both our memory and our ability to concentrate on any one thing deteriorates. The activity doesn’t get stored; superficiality in all endeavors follows.

Slow down.

Do one thing at a time.

Maneuvering your life through crowded calendars and agendas requires carefulness. Pay attention. Crashing a car is bad enough. Pay attention. Crashing your life is worse.

Do you want to accomplish more? Feel less harried? Be more focused? Dig deeper?

Slow down.

Do one thing at a time.

Like that “speed check ahead” warning, let this post serve to have you check your life’s pace. Take more time on fewer things. Proofread things. Pick appointed times to check emails and texts. Go for a walk. Sit and look out the window.

*Hari also concludes that while the computer is built for multi-tasking, no matter how hard we try the brain is not. Computers have multiple processors. Humans have but one. Multi-tasking is beyond the brain’s capacity.