At school I studied languages - Russian, French, Latin and Greek. I couldn’t afford to go on any school trips so never got the chance to use the first two in conversation. So today I have a huge residual foreign language vocabulary but faced with a French or Russian speaker I freeze. I can probably speak as much conversational Spanish now as French or Russian thanks to my foreign holidays. -‘dos cafés con leche por favor’.
Everything has to have a diagnosis these days. My struggle with attention and focus might be put down to a case of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). My only consolation is that I’m far from alone in experiencing this. Last year King’s College London’s Centre for Attention Studies (yes - it really does exist) found that 49% of 2,000 adults surveyed felt their attention span was shorter than it used to be. Almost as many (47%) agreed that “‘deep thinking’ has become a thing of the past”. In a new book published this year, “Attention Span: Finding Focus for a Fulfilling Life” author Dr Gloria Mark concludes that there are two schools of thought on attention. The first argues that we haven’t lost our ability to focus, it has been stolen from us by technology. Those in the second camp maintain that most of our struggles with focus are more to do with self-control. We can’t be distracted unless we are on some level willing to be distracted.
Thanks to spending all our time on social media, we tend to consume and produce content in bite-size chunks, at a frenetic pace. I’m not going to take a 600 page historical novel to bed with me but I am quite happy to consume all the content of a Scottish Review at a single sitting (although Gerry Hassan’s contributions wouldn’t lose anything by being three or four paragraphs shorter). “We are creating the culture,” says Mark. “Our attention spans have shaped the media, and the media in turn is shaping our attention.”
Think I’ll just stop there. I want to read my emails.