Attention Residue Is Ruining Your Concentration

Tanya Basu, for The Science of Us:

Which means ... what, exactly? Newport explains it using a 2009 paper titled “Why Is It So Hard to Do My Work?” from Sophie Leroy, a business-school professor at the University of Minnesota. She studied a modern, daily workplace conundrum: switching between tasks and getting things done. In two experiments, Leroy finds that people are less productive when they are constantly moving from one task to another instead of focusing on one thing at a time.

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Leroy calls this carryover from one task to another “attention residue,” where you’re still thinking of a previous task as you start another one. Even if you finish your task completely, you still have some attention residue swirling around your head as you embark on your next task, meaning that bullet point on your to-do list doesn’t start off on the right foot. In other words, as much as multitasking gets nods for being an asset in today’s time-crunched world, it’s not really a good thing when it comes to your productivity, and it's actually a time-waster.

David Bowie On Feeling Safe On What You Are Working On

“The other thing I would say is that if you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth, and when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

David Bowie

“What do I want?” Here’s a better question

Quartz' Ask The Hard Questions: 

A more interesting question, a question that perhaps you’ve never considered before, is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out. 

Rochelle King: Your Biggest Rival is Your Best Asset

In our jobs, family life, and social circles, conflict is difficult to manage. In this 99U Talk, Spotify's Global VP of Design Director Rochelle King reminds us that tension is essential in any creative endeavor. Instead of running from confrontation King says, "the biggest thing that I've learned about dealing with conflict is that it's fundamentally about the mindset. Explicitly embracing conflict actually allowed me to take control of it."

Why Work Is so Much Easier than Love

The Book of Life, from A School of Life begins an essay on work and love this way: 

We’re a culture that’s highly attuned to what’s beautiful and moving about love; we know its high points and celebrate its ecstasies in films and songs. By comparison, work is the dull, tedious bit – the thing we have to do to pay the bills. And yet what’s striking is how often work, despite its lack of glamour, in fact turns out to be the easier, more enjoyable and ultimately more humane part of life.