Linda Stone on Continuous Partial Attention: The War On Flow

Linda Stone has an odd way of responding to the comments I made recently about Continuous Partial Attention in my Reboot talk, Flow: A New Consciousness For A Web Of Flow. I guess she must have a google search bot running for Continuous Partial Attention, and it led her to Stephanie Booth's post about my talk. Fine. But she left a comment there addressed to me, as if it was my blog, not Stephanie's. But I don't think Linda looked at my slides. She certainly wasn't there for the presentation. I am not Stephanie Booth, so her paragraph is her own take on what I said. Here's Linda's comment:

Stowe,

I read your paragraph above regarding my continuous partial attention thesis. Once again, you appear to misunderstand my work. Check http://www.continuouspartialattention.com.

Continuous partial attention is not something that I judge to be “good” or “bad.” EVERY attention strategy has a place and matches to an activity, a desire. CONTINUOUS continuous partial attention, that is — operating in a constant state of vigilance, high alert, always on, is stressful to the body. It creates an adrenalized fight or flight state, cortisol floods the body. The bottom line: continuous partial attention some of the time can be a great thing. Continuous, continuous partial attention — or continuous partial attention ALL the time, is a contributing factor to insomnia, obesity, and stress-related diseases.

Cheers,

Linda

Ok, again Linda asserts that I don't understand what she is saying. First of all, you superficially state that you don't think CPA is good or bad, but then she tries splitting a hair by asserting that its only CONTINUOUS continuous partial attention that's bad, leading to obesity, insomnia, and dandruff. CONTINUOUS continuous? Isn't continuous once enough?

She seems to be saying CPA isn't bad so long as you don't do it CONTINUOUSLY. Isn't that the whole point?

Sure -- I accept the notion that at some times it may be attractive to close the door, turn off the music, and only listen to the tiny voices in your head. But I believe that the value of that sort of disconnected time is over-rated: it's not a given of human psychology, it's a cultural, learned behavior.

I don't think that CPA leads to your adrenal glands being in an uproar, unless you have grown up in an environment where CPA is foreign, like baby boomers. Modern homo sapiens is content with constantly scanning, constantly grooming tribe members, constantly remaining connnected, constantly juggling. I don't have insomnia.

Here's the slide I used in my talk, which I pulled from something she wrote back in 2002:

In the talk, I lumped her and her anti-CPA screed (Yes, Linda, that's how I interpret it, and please stop telling me I don't understand you. I understand you better than you do.) along with Toffler's Information Overload (it's driving us crazy, he asserted) and the Attention Economy mavens (free information leads to attention scarcity). I don't buy any of it.

Here' the Contrarian View to CPA:

One of the points I made at Reboot is that we will be in a war with the folks that want to tell us that flow is bad for us:

(Yes, that is Instant Messaging Barbie. If anyone out there has one, I would love to buy it!)

Linda and many others will tell us it will rot our teeth, disrupt family life, and lead to hair on our palms. I for one am not eager to turn off my devices and pay all my attention to one thing at a time, one moment at a time. There are too many targets on the horizon, too many members of the tribe, and too many jaguars lurking in the shadows for that. In my tribe, we don't do things that way.

tags: cpa, continuous+partial+attention, reboot9, flow, linda+stone, tribal+logic, presentation

Comments

[Tola]

Your post about Continuous partial attention is good. I get it now. Seems to me that in many ways CPA brings us back to our roots - organized in tribes and constantly in touch with at least a part of the group.

As a painter who enjoys to locking the doors and shutting the world out when I create, I often wondered how my ancient predecessors operated in a communal environment. Maybe this is why we view the Shaman as the crazy dude living in the hut down the path. He/She figured out that the only way to be an introvert in a communal society was to pretend one needed quiet to properly commune with the spirit world. Perhaps this would explain why there are fewer introverts than extroverts in the world today. Can’t really survive very well if you are not consistently and constantly in touch with the group.

Anyway, I think that this CPA thing has merit and as we try to build useful applications, we will pay some attention to it.

[Chris Saad]

hey hey don't lump us Attention Mavens in :)
http://www.particls.com/blog/2007/06/continuous-partial-attention-revisited.html

[Dave Winer]

Linda Stone makes an important point, about human physiology, something that can't change in just a couple of generations.

To be healthy we have to unplug every day for long periods of time, or else we get sick. To some extent it's involuntary, you just fall asleep if you've been awake too long.

I like to go for long walks and let my mind wander in no particular direction, even if my feet are going somewhere particular.

[Galen]

I think she has an important point -- continuous partial attention can be useful in many situations, but it takes a toll after a while. CPA is a state -- and you can be in such a state for varying amounts of time. She is saying that being in it for a long time throughout the day/week can be harmful.

[Folletto Malefico]

I think that CPA and Flow are both existing in our lives and that both have strong connection to different states of mind.

You two probably have completely opposite points of view, that's normal, but I see too much "hate" between the two points, a thing that's unrequired. You have opinions, that's all. :)

I use both CPA and Flow, and in periods like this when i 'have to' use quite 100% CPA, I NEED sometimes to have Flow sessions. Thay're more creative, insightful, productive in a personal term.

In the same way, CPA periods are more networked, social and aware of the world.

I treat them as two tools, and I use them when I need them. That's all. :)

[Farnell Gloob]

This is just a bunch of buzzword doubletalk.

[Charles Frith]

Most mothers of two or more children will understand Continuous Partial Attention . It is exhausting but so is working hard.

[Richard Gay]

What is "Dunbar's Constant," and where does it originate?

[Phil Wolff]

The way you use "flow" is confusing. For the better part of a decade folks have been using flow to describe a state of deep immersion, of concentration and focus. http://tinyurl.com/n9tfe for the Flow State Wikipedia entry.

I may be wrong, but you seem to mean "flow" as applying Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's flow state, a deep focus easily destroyed by interruption, with Stone's CPA, a state of receptivity to interruption. It's as though you are picking out a particular type of interruption, making it the subject of MC's flow state, intense focus on interuptions. Do I have this right?

[Stowe Boyd]

Phil -

I am suggesting that we can have both. This sort of flow is a wide feild of focus including our connections to others, a receptivity in that state to sharing flow with others.

When a basketball player is in the "zone", she doesn't block possible 'interuptions' from teammates. She welcomes them, she is receptive to them: she expects and anticipates them.

Too many people seem to think that you only achieve flow in a lotus posture with your eyes and ears closed.

These 'interruptions' are not interruptive when we are anticipating, eager for opportunities to improvize with others.

[Stowe Boyd]

Richard -

Dunbar's Constant refers to Robin Dunbar, the anthropologist and author of "Gossip, Grooming, and the Evolution of Language."

[Stowe Boyd]

The comments by several here -- Linda and Dave -- about the health effects of CPA are relevant. I will snoop around trying to find any definitive stuff on that.

Let me say that I am not arguing against naps or long walks. I am suggesting however that the needle has swung decidedly in the direction of remaining connected, and so that more and more long walks will be punctuated by the chirp of text messages arriving.

The moralists will continue to rail against this, and all manner of folk will howl about work/life balance and the like. Fine.

But it is happening, and there is an alternative to throwing away your cell phone and painting your computer screen black. And I for one believe that we can accommodate this without ulcers, tooth decay, and toe fungus taking us over.

[Rodger D. Johnson]

I agree with David Winer. CPA is harmful, like anything else, in excess. And there is something to say about disconnecting from the grid for some peace and quiet too. It is very much in the human nature to seek out or create peaceful environments where we can rejuvenate.

[Kelly Adams]

I'm a firm believer in leveraging technology to *simplify* my life, to permit me the ability to work where and how I want to.

There is an inherent danger in all of these enabling technologies, though: that of becoming perpetually on the clock. Everything is an emergency, all decisions must be made right now, the fate of the universe stands in the balance! The answer, in my mind, is not to toss away the technology. Instead, I think it is like most things in life: the answer is to find a personal state of balance.

Finding that balance requires, for me at least, an occasional step back or "out" of the race. Turning off the computer, sitting down with a non-technical book...or perhaps having that afternoon nap. For some people, this needs to be planned in to their day in order to "force" them out of unhealthy patterns.

My personal "success zone" is an intense form of concentration, dealing with a specific set of problems without interruption. I am at my best when my email is silent, my IM is in Do Not Disturb mode, my phone is forwarded to voice mail. I am a code designer and developer, and without concentration I personally find it very difficult to find solutions.

I am personally affronted by people who write weighty tomes or appear on TV to tell me that I must be wired in 24 hours a day, thumbing my Blackberry while talking on the cell phone and emailing my overseas contacts, in order to be valuable. Likewise, I find those who claim I must sit alone in the forest naked for several hours a day to be just as shrill. Although my personal "productivity zone" may be more towards the latter position, neither position is "right". Perhaps some individuals gain insight into their own problems by considering the extremes, but someone telling me what is right for me (or you!) is deeply mistaken.

That which is "balanced" for me would be severely unbalanced for someone else. To be healthy, we all need to re-examine our personal behavior patterns now and then to look for unhealthy trends, but flip-flopping from one extreme to another isn't getting anyone anywhere.

[alan p]

Not quite clear on the difference between CPA and good old multitasking.....as others have noted, you have to switch from high attention modes or else you get tired etc - but this is hartdly anything new.

And compared to how wired Gamers get, CPA is pretty mild imho.