This One Habit Is Killing The Modern Office Worker
With intentional practice, it’s easy to fix.
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It started when I was in third grade when I feel out of my chair.
Thump! I hit the floor with force. Dozens of eyeballs peeking over at me, giggling and pointing.
I hate being the center of attention, but I also have an insatiable defense against embarrassment — a weird dichotomy, I know.
My father, who served as an infantry Marine in the Vietnam War, is who I can blame.
With an incredible sense of humor and a unique skill to royally not give a fuck, he was my teacher.
My ADD is what landed me on the floor.
As the decades have passed, my ADD has become progressively worse if I don’t focus on controlling it, thanks to modern technology.
The distractions are endless. They’re pervasive on every device, in every room, and in all situations.
It’s difficult to escape them. The distraction is endless.
Today’s distraction is called continuous partial attention, which has a detrimental impact on our health.
A study claims that up to 80 percent of office workers suffer from continuous partial attention.
Even percentages are always wrong, but from my experience, and witnessing my team in action, this one is underestimated.
I’d say it’s more like, 98.89% of the average office worker.
Whatever the number is, it’s a big problem.
We scan our email, reply to one or two of them, take a note, check social media, get alerts on our phone, read a text message, respond to a team member in Google Hangouts, look at the comments in our project management software, and we repeat this cycle, over and over.
When we’re distracted like this, our breathing becomes erratic and shallow.
It’s estimated that some times, office workers don’t breathe for 30-seconds, or longer when they’re in a continuous partial attention mode.
