Friday 9/1/17
12:04 pm: I was in lower waiting for my food to be ready, so I was reading the article online on my phone.
12:26 pm: My number was called so I put my phone and the article away to get my meal and go eat.
3:03 pm: I began reading the article again in my room on my laptop where I left off.
3:30 pm: My alarm went off reminding me I had to go to a meeting for my sorority, so I had to stop reading the article.
Saturday 9/2/17
1:16 pm: I was sitting in the living room of the house on the floor where other people were sitting and chatting.
1:23 pm: I got a text message notification from my friend so I scrolled to the bottom to see how much I had left. Then I stopped reading to send a text back.
1:34 pm: I went into the kitchen because that is where everyone was hanging out. I was sharing a chair with someone and my friend was playing with my hair while I was bent over reading the article on my phone.
1:43 pm: Someone else came into the kitchen with an announcement to go to the living room, so I put the article away.
1:45 pm: I pulled my phone out to read the last few paragraphs.
1:52 pm: I was done reading the first article on my phone.
Sunday 9/3/17
3:18 pm: I began the book reading in my room while my friend sat on my bed.
3:19 pm: Before I got even a sentence into the reading my friend asked me a question. We then began a conversation together instead of reading.
3:31 pm: I actually started reading again while sitting on my bed.
3:53 pm: I finished the reading.
Due to the assignment of recording all distractions and times when I stopped reading, I was trying to be more aware of how I was focusing my attention. I didn’t have a lot of free time to do homework over the weekend due to sorority obligations, so I had to figure out other times to do the readings. I started reading on my phone, which felt weird since the article was talking about technology and our attention spans. The first day didn’t provide many distractions, but the second day I was in an extremely distracting environment. Surrounded by girls talking and one friend playing with my hair, I sat bent over the the chair attempting to read the article on my phone. I didn’t record every time I had to go back up a few sentences to reread, but there were definitely times when I could feel my attention trying to go elsewhere. After analysis of my time journal I saw that the majority of my distractions were face to face social ones. Even if we close our computers and put away our phones, society still calls us back.
I don’t think that I am a very good multi-tasker but I certainly try to be one when I can. Personally, I find that I work better when I am getting one thing done at a time. Sometimes I even try to scroll through instagram while I watch Netflix, but I am never able to fully take in what happening on either network. I would consider being in a distracting environment while trying to complete something, like a homework reading, would be multi-tasking. Like I said, because of my surroundings, I would have to go back and reread the paragraph because I couldn’t hear myself think while everyone was talking around me. Multi-tasking is hard but I think a lot of people today try to attempt it, mostly to save time. I believe that society sometimes underestimates the time that they will have to do things, so everyone starts going nowhere fast. Technology and mobile devices only speed up this process of multi-tasking, whether it is posting the same photo to various social media platforms, or trying to do homework while scrolling through Facebook.
Even though many people, especially college students, have a hard time putting down the phone and social media, there are something’s important enough to make that happen. If I have an assignment that I know I need to complete, I am good at flipping my phone over or putting it out of sight. This brief separation from society allows me to get my work done, and the reward of getting my phone after pushes me to finish it. I become more attentive when there are assignments that are interesting to me. However, rarely will an assignment seem more interesting than just relaxing watching a show or roaming the internet. On the other hand, there is the importance of the assignment or material that pushes me to stay focused. Everyone has their own techniques to get things done, some better than others, but I still believe there is that pulling and calling from society that makes us all struggle to stay focused.