Age of distractions

Santeri Liukkonen:

The book is exciting and the story is funny. In fact, I’m learning something new. So much so, that I keep writing down my ideas and shuffling their implications. And suddenly, I realize something. In the past 15-minutes, I’ve only managed to cover three pages and I’m already thinking about next things I’m supposed to do. Cleaning, picking-up the groceries, doing my excercises, writing a couple of lines of code, watching a movie…

Is this supposed to be my Saturday off work?

So I stop and think. When was the last moment that took longer than 10 seconds, where I didn’t have an urge to check an app on my phone, see if I got new email, or impulsively do something else?

By now, where I live, it’s been many months of nightly curfews and limitations on travel and social life. I consider myself a very fortunate person to have suffered a relatively small impact from the global pandemic. Nonetheless, I can’t stop but think about why my mind feels so exhausted while at the same time requiring a constant stream of stimulus that results in overbearing distraction