How's Your Focus?

This has nothing to do with anything, but may I just say how much I loved Viola Davis' look last night at the Oscars? Oh. My. Goodness! So elegant! So beautiful! It made me smile to see her there in all of her natural glory.


Remember that post I wrote over at The High Calling about my hair? Well, when I saw Viola Davis on television in her smashing green dress and stunning hair, it stirred up so many emotions in me. We need more women like Viola Davis on the red carpet. We really do. 

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A few months ago, I heard about a study whose results determined all of this social media stuff is messing with our minds. I wish I could tell you where I heard about it. But I can't remember. And that proves the point of the study.

According to the study, those of us who spend time on social media have attention spans that are getting shorter and shorter. We're running out of patience and our ability to focus is steadily shrinking.

This month, my Kindle wouldn't charge, so I read books on my laptop, in The Cloud. Often, while reading, I'd have other tabs open in my browser, which meant I received notifications when someone posted something on my Facebook wall, or sent me an email, or pinned something new on Pinterest. That little notification would pop up and off I'd go to see what was going on elsewhere. Then, I'd click back to The Cloud and try to remember where I'd left off.

I started to worry that perhaps the study is right. What if my focus has gotten diluted by 140 character Twitter posts and instant Facebook updates that refresh every minute or so?

And then I started reading "The Hunger Games." That book grabbed me from the very first page.

I could not put that book down. I didn't click away. I didn't do laundry. I didn't cook. I didn't move from the love seat in my living room, and I read the entire book in one day. Which made me think perhaps what social media has actually done is to make so much information available all at once, that my brain has been trained to skip quickly from one source to another, in search of the information that's most compelling. Yeah. I like that idea better.

How about you? Have you noticed a difference in your focus since you've been using social media? And what great books did you read this month?

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This post is the second in a series of monthly updates, chronicling my attempt to read 25 more books this year than I did last year. I'm doing this with help from The List - a list of book recommendations from readers of Jumping Tandem. Feel free to join in! Click here for all the details. And then click the tab at the top of this page to find The List.


These are the other truly wonderful books I'm reading this month: