Nancy Gibbs Quotes

It comes down to a question of attention: it's difficult to use the Net distractedly, unlike the television or the radio.

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.

The average human attention span was 12 seconds in 2000 and 8 seconds in 2013. A drop of 33%. The scary part is that the attention span of a goldfish was 9 seconds, almost 13% more than us humans. That's why it's getting tougher by the day to get people to turn the page. Maybe we writers ought to try writing for goldfish!

I find that I can't work and listen to radio - either I find I don't like it and it distracts me, or I do like it and I want to listen to it.

The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention.

Our attention spans have become shorter because there are more and more claims upon them - more information, more complexity; more stories, more stuff; more.

For years, particularly with the advent of the Internet, people have been griping about lessening attention spans.

I don't think you can read poetry while you're watching television very well.

To be honest, I don't enjoy watching movies much when I'm working. They tend to fall apart on me a bit.

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.

There are different usage patterns - I never do email during the day. I don't multitask well at all. I don't know how to be in a meeting and participate and be on email at the same time. I do see some people do it more effectively. I've never quite figured that out.

I have a choice - I can either watch all the dailies, or I can follow the social media. I can't do both.

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 have a short attention span, so when one book isn't working out, I just work on another.

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

We used to think that you could pay attention to five to nine things at a time. We now know that's not true. That's a crazy overestimate. The conscious mind can attend to about three things at once. Trying to juggle any more than that, and you're going to lose some brainpower.

I think we all have really busy lives now and there's so much stimulation, there's so many artists, there's so much music, there's so much art, there's so much everything in a world it's hard to get people to focus on 12 songs of yours at once.

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.

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.

One of the problems of modern society, or the post-Internet age, is that there are so many things bombarding us that we could care about. I think it's more important than ever to really get clear and focus on what's worth caring about and what's just noise or distraction.

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

I have to always make sure I don't stay in one place and spend too much time one subject. I have my wife tell me [through an earpiece], "Come back! You're taking too long on that subject." I need to be reeled in.