Easily Bored

The NY Times article on productivity [reg required] is getting a lot of attention. I have suffered from what I feel is rapidly diminishing productivity in recent years, some of which I believe is due to constantly divided attention. I was turned onto getting things done simply because I felt like I wasn't.

I think it comes down to people continually, progressively becoming more easily bored. In lives with constant stimulation, applying the focus required to get something done, something less stimulating than trying three things at once, seems boring. I think of the tv screens with multiple tickers. Dashboards. There is a definite need to find ways of creating ambient alerts. Things that only interrupt us when they have to. I think ambient findability is great concept as well. If I am typing in a document, and relevant resources on my hard drive, my network, my email, and the internet are being updated in a sidebar, they will be right at hand when I decide I need to look for something, it will have already been found.

There's so much to do. How can we be so bored?