Douglas Rushkoff Quotes

I find it so easy to get distracted - I try not to do more than one thing at any one time.

No one would choose to be jerked randomly off task again and again until you have half a dozen things you're trying to get done, all at the same time.

Still, I tune out the visual input when it is too distracting, mainly in conversations.

Clearing your head of distractions in order to notice and understand the people you are with can feel inefficient - there are so many other people and issues to think about. But being present makes you effective.

Working in an office with an array of electronic devices is like trying to get something done at home with half a dozen small children around. The calls for attention are constant.

No more than a surgeon can operate while tweeting can you reach your potential with one ear in, one ear out. You actually have to reacquaint yourself with concentration. We all do.

It's hard to watch something go on and be talking at the same time.

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 think people who multitask pay a huge price. They think they're being extra productive, and I think when you multitask so much you don't have time to think about anything deeply, you are giving the world an advantage you shouldn't do, and practically everybody is drifting into that mistake.

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.

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.

Most of us can easily do two things at once; what's all but impossible is to do one thing at once.

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

If people don't feel they've got your attention, you're not going to succeed.

When you think you're listening to several conversations at once, they tell me, you may really simply be time sharing - that is, listening a little bit to this one, a little bit to that one.

I tend to write in coffee shops and restaurants with friends of mine because if I'm at home, I get distracted by the television or the cats or my husband, or... you know - all of those things that make it easy to procrastinate.

I don't mind being distracted.

I feel like my competition is everything else that's competing for people's attention, not just other print magazines, newspapers and cable. It's your kid's report card and the games you want to play, all the things that compete for people's time.

The average American worker has fifty interruptions a day, of which seventy percent have nothing to do with work.

I'm a person of whim, and easily distracted. I don't like multitasking. When I'm doing one thing, I like to do just that thing.

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

Human language... prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.

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 always interrupt work with other work, either in a small way or big way, so that's normal.

One of the points about distractions is that everything that they do is destabilizing.