Bioindustrial Innovation Centre

An enlightened moment can occur at any time.  For myself, while sitting in a conference centre with the drone of an air-conditioner, I had a fleeting moment of transparency: the implications of multi-tasking in the digital age.  the informative presentation was focusing on professional development programs for business incubators.  A story was told about a gentleman, who was well versed in digital technology, found it necessary to go off the grid in order to concentrate on a task.  Acording to the presenters, Bill, a former executive of his global corporation, would spend one week a year of reading and thinking about the future.  During his information hiatus, phones, e-mails, tweets, would not be permitted.  Bill would mull, ponder and then propagate his thoughts back to his people at Microsoft.  Anyone within his organization could submit information for Bill to read regarding the direction of his segregation activity.

Environmental changes become necessary to encourage focused concentration.  Some unhook phones, unplug cables or use noise-cancelling headphones to dull the stimulating environment.  Bill wanted a pilgrimmage of immesion because of a desire for unbroken concentration.  In a world that prides itself on connectedness, it is interesting to note his steps for concentration - full separation from the grid.  Could it be assumed that handling five or six tasks at one time, we lose a significant amount of concentration - do we need to prioritize and approach each project as a separate item?

We have the perception that as knowledge workers, we are able to muti-task without compromising quality.  Being empowered by digital media is addictive.  E-mail, tweets and multimedia applications are working together as a perceived well-oiled machine, but are we operating at a high degree of efficiency givent the number of tasks at hand?  Eventhough we delight in our problem solving and creation ability, academic research has found that students who are multi-tasking on digital applications have distraction tendencies, memory organizational issues and decline in analytical reasoning.  Any one of these effects should be enough to sideline the digital media multi-tasking cause.

My enlightened eureka moment was soom competing with inbox messages, tweets, and other mobile time saving devices.  The drone of an airconditioner was even replaced with bird-like sounds as someone was sharing information on a new application.  As for Bill and his focusing retreat, I will locate the power switch for those focusing moments.  By eliminating phones, computers and other information vehicles, unbroken concentration could be fostered - something worthwhile.  Intelligence is diverse, dynamic and distinct and we should recognize the filters and refocusing our minds will allow for greater depth on information users.