Doug Aitken Quotes

I've gotten much better at multi-tasking. It's hard, though. But, writing a script is not totally focused. You're taking little breaks, all the time. If a kid runs in, you give 'em a horsey ride. It's a pretty fluid process.

It takes 25 minutes to recover from a phone call or an e-mail, researchers have found, and yet the average person receives such an interruption every 11 minutes. Which means that we're never caught up; we're always out of breath, running behind.

We live in such an age of chatter and distraction. Everything is a challenge for the ears and eyes.

That's what the internet is: it's like bombarding your eyeballs with these myriad blinking colour lights. It's like trying to watch a movie on your phone in the middle of Times Square.

These days you're not just competing with the tedium, you're competing with the cellphone.

I think we have the attention span of a gnat. You know, with cell phones and Twitter.

If you try to multitask in the classic sense of doing two things at once, what you end up doing is quasi-tasking. It's like being with children. You have to give it your full attention for however much time you have, and then you have to give something else your full attention.

I am aware, as everybody has to be, that there's more competition for one's attention nowadays.

Look at this generation, with all of its electronic devices and multitasking. I will confidently predict less success than Warren, who just focused on reading.

My brain is a big cluster of stuff. It moves quickly and loses focus quickly, so I need many projects to keep me stimulated - it's a luxury to be able to do lots of different things: style, write, present, DJ or just consult. It can't be any other way; I think I would shrivel up and fall asleep forever.

My biggest hurdle usually has to do with concentration. I have a tendency to kind of start working on something, and then, all of a sudden, I'll totally divert and do something totally different.

HOBBES: All this modern technology just makes people try to do everything at once.

If I think of something, half-way into it, I can throw it in there and it won't be so far down the line that it would be insignificant. However, I also like to completely focus on something for a certain period of time, and then be able to move on to something else.

I think that we get so distracted with our smartphones... It takes your body and your brain time to switch between tasks. If we can focus on what we're doing, we'll be more productive at that task.

There are too many distractions on a computer.

A modern audience is capable of processing just so much information because they're used to visual media that's on overload.

I love the web, but man, I look at my browser, and there are, like, twenty tabs up there, all jostling for space and time, all framed by a mosaic of other apps, other work, other entertainment... so even when I really am paying attention to something on the web, there's this peripheral haze.

I have a short attention span. And when I'm in the middle of one thing, I'm then drawn to the next thing.

It takes different mindsets to do different things.

The questions that our society must ask revolve around whether the time-consuming demands of the deep-reading processes will be lost in a culture whose principal mediums advantage speed, multitasking, and processing the next and the next piece of information.

You're able to see situations over and over again and just become comfortable in different decision-making situations. I think that comes with experience.

My mind is always free. My mind is flexible.

I've always been good at refocusing my attention away from something that was bringing me down.

A lot of people don't feel like doing very much. Or one project is really all they can do at one time. I can have five or six things going at the same time. It doesn't bother me or tire me, but sometimes it does rattle me.

In effect, dividing your attention means that neither (or none) of the things you're working on is really getting the full effect of your intelligence, and that it in the end takes you longer than it would if you did one thing at a time.