Taskus Interruptus: Good Writing Requires Concentration
(Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by M.H. Sam Jacobson, Legal Research & Writing Instructor [Retired] at Willamette University College of Law in Salem, Oregon)
Good writing requires knowing what you want to say. Knowing what you want to say and how to say it requires concentration. And concentration requires managing distractions, no small task in today’s multimedia world. Never before has the ability to pay attention been challenged to the extent it is being challenged today.
The Cacophony of the Modern Workspace
Consider what happens when you just want to type a document. You open the file and begin working when a pop-up message says you have a program update. You can stop what you are doing and then restart your computer, or you can ignore the message, only to have the pop-up return over and over until you give up in frustration, save what you are doing, update the program and restart your computer.