Do you have a noise Addiction?

 We live in unprecedented times for distractions or as a friend calls it "noise". Most of that distraction can come from"todays" technology....internet, email, "Crackberry", iphone, laptops, social media, etc.

I have always enjoyed this technology; the convenience and creativeness has been very enjoyable and easy to use.  But like millions of others, I am be addicted to this new technology.  I mean is it possible that these items have become such a part of my life that I have allowed them to run my life in a way? YES!  So distracted i didn't even know it?  YES!  

Well they say the first step to recovery is admission! Ok, I admit it!

I need to rethink how I use technology and more importantly, when I shouldn't use it!  In other words, there is a "stop and smell the roses" aspect to this as well.  Taking the time to get out and away technology to enjoy life.

We will  never be able to escape the grip of technology but we can control how much of a grip we let technology take hold.  Hopefully, for some of you who are suffering the same fate as I did.

Some useful tips to consider on creating balance in your life:

• Planned periods of inaccessibility
• Filter Phone Calls, IM, FB Twitter updates
• Eliminate rather than streamline noise
• Actively utilize the Spam vs. delete button for unwanted emails
• Stop Junk/Spam The average person receives over 40 lbs of junk mail and 2,000 none productive emails per year. 1-6 weeks per year, add to this IM, FB, Twitter, Skype to name a few!

Good Luck! and share your thoughts

Update on Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 5:42PM by Admin

"The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains," author Nicholas Carr looks through the lens of neuroscience at how the Internet shapes our brains. 

Task-switching Or Multitasking? 

In today's information-rich society, people frequently attempt to perform many tasks at once. This often requires them to juggle their limited resources in order to accomplish each of these tasks successfully. This juggling is not always easy, and in many cases can lead to greater inefficiency in performing each individual task. For example, using a cellular telephone while driving can lead to both poor communication and poor driving. In the brain, juggling multiple tasks ("Multitasking") is performed by mental executive processes that manage the individual tasks and determine how, when, and with what priorities they get performed. These executive processes act like a choreographer who orchestrates many individual dancers so that they can perform as a single unit, or an air-traffic controller who schedules many airplanes that take off and land on the same runway. If the individual dancers or airplanes are not scheduled appropriately, the results can be catastrophic.

What is the real cost of task-switching?

Multitasking can be difficult when a person must perform two tasks simultaneously, but problems can also occur when a person switches from performing one task to performing another. Performing two or more tasks in rapid succession requires an individual to reorient to each new task, which itself takes time and other attentional resources. In our research, we have studied this aspect of multitasking using a task-switching paradigm. In our task-switching experiments, participants either perform a single task throughout a trial block, or alternate between two tasks during the trial block. By comparing completion times of single-task and dual-task blocks, we can measure the cost (in time) for the task-switching processes. By conducting these experiments, we have been able to understand how aspects of the individual tasks (such as task difficulty and task familiarity) can affect these task-switching costs. 

The Brain, Cognition, and Action Laboratory, Cognition and Perception Program Department of Psychology The University of Michigan

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