Digital overload is creating undeachievers

By SAM WAMBUGU

Since you woke up, how many WhatsApp messages have you read? How many have you sent or forwarded? How many video clips have you watched on WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter and Tiktok?

We are swimming in an ocean of information. Our minds are constantly darting from one gadget to another, from one piece of information to the next in quick succession.

We are inundated; even the best and the brightest can’t cope with this firehose of information.

With all these digital distractions, our brains are under siege; it is difficult to pay attention to one thing from start to end. The quality of our personal and professional work in compromised.

PRESSURE

Researchers studying the mind’s behaviour have calculated that our mind drifts 46.9 percent of the time. That leaves us with slightly more than half of our time to focus on tasks. If you extrapolate that statistic to whole human life, you realise that we spend almost half of our life distracted, doing tasks we have not planned. That is a lot of wasted time!

All these unrelenting jets of information piles pressure on our lives; because we feel we are falling behind and we need to catch up. There is a school of thought that exalts multitasking. Its proponents glorify multitasking as an excellent quality that should be honed by all.

But multitasking is a mirage. Multiple studies have shown that when we attempt to multi-task, we take more time, make more mistakes, and use up more mental energy.

According to research by Mckinsey & company—a management consulting firm—when we bombard our brains with information throughout the day, we become less productive, less creative and are likely to make poor decisions. The net effect is that our brain capacity atrophies and we fall from one level of ineffectiveness to the next.

CHAOS

What is the way out of this chaos? Rasmus Hougaard, the author of the book One Second Ahead, argues that focusing on one thing and mindfully tuning out distractions optimises an individual’s performance.

Hougaard opines that by giving conscious attention to one task at a time, we save our brain energy—a precious resource. For example, when watching an informative video, typing a text, or sending an important email, Hougaard recommends that we consciously give the task our full attention.

Therefore, it means creating a specific time for responding to emails, text messages, and updating social media instead of impulsively responding to messages as they chime in.

Here is my point: We have become so dependent on digital devices. Their holy grail is ceaseless streams of information that lower our productivity and increase our stress levels. By tuning out incessant digital dings, we experience higher productivity, improved performance and less stress.

Mr Wambugu is an informatician. Email:[email protected] Twitter: @samwambugu2