Title: The Distraction Addiction: Getting the Information You Need and the Communication You Want, Without Enraging Your Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Destroying Your Soul
Author: Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2013
Publisher: Little Brown
Acquired: From the publisher for review consideration
Rating:

Review: In The Distraction Addiction, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, a “professional futurist” with a PhD in the history of science, asks a useful and important question: “Can we stay connected without diminishing our intelligence, attention spans, and ability to really live?”

I like the way that question is phrased because it addresses both the positive and the negative ways that technology impacts our lives. I love that it’s easy to check in with my family and close friends with a quick text message or comment on Facebook. I love that being online has led me to close friendships with other book lovers on both sides of the country. But I’m frustrated by the way that I have let technology start to affect my own behavior and cut into the time that I have for other pursuits. No tool or technology or advancement is all good or all bad — a philosophy that Pang adopts throughout the entire book.

Pang opens the book with the Buddhist idea of the “monkey mind” — a mind that “leaps about and never stays in one place.” As humans, our monkey mind is attracted to information, new choices and blinking things, regardless if those are good or bad technologies or choices. He goes on to note that in Buddhism, “mental discipline is more an end in itself, rather than just a means to an end. The everyday mind is like churning water; learn to make it still, like the mirror-flat surface of a calm lake and its reflection will show you everything.”

That image of the monkey mind resonated with me. When I get stressed or overwhelmed (or even just when I’m procrastinating), I get into a weird habit of compulsively flipping through my various feeds and social networks to see what’s going on. Twitter. Facebook. Feedly. Instagram. Email. Twitter. Pinterest. Twitter. Email. Feedly. Twitter. It turns into an endless loop of refreshing and refreshing until I get something new that never really comes. That looping is an unhelpful and unsatisfying way to spend time that, until I read this book, I wasn’t conscious that I was doing as often as I was doing it or, more importantly, conscious of how it made me feel.

Throughout the book, Pang advocates for an approach called contemplative computing:

Contemplative computing isn’t enabled by a technological break-through or scientific discovery. You don’t buy it. You do it. It’s based on a blend of new science and philosophy, some very old techniques for managing your attention and mind, and a lot of experience with how people use (or are used by) information technologies. It shows you how your mind and body interact with computers and how your attention and creativity are influenced by technology. It gives you the tools to redesign your relationships with devices and the Internet, to make them work better for you. It’s a promise that you can construct a healthier, more balanced relationship with information technology.

It sound a little pie-in-the-sky, I know, but I found that the studies, examples and profiles Pang included in The Distraction Addiction gave me some concrete ideas about how I can use technology better. Each chapter is focused around a verb — breathe, simplify, meditate, deprogram, experiment, refocus, and rest — which I think reflects the overall usefulness of the book.

One habit that reading The Distraction Addiction made me address is the constant pinging of notifications on my phone. Earlier this year I had sound notifications on for almost every app I had installed, so my phone was always beeping and blinking at me with new information, forcing an interruption with whatever I was working on because I’m not a person who can just NOT look at a new message. For awhile I’d just keep it on silent almost all the time, but then I ended up meeting calls or text messages that were actually important.

In the book, Pang talks about making deliberate choices about technology and arranging your space to encourage focus. Having the phone buzzing at me was letting other people dictate where my attention was going at a given time. I don’t need to do that. As a result, I’ve shut off all notifications (including email, which felt like a huge thing), but leave the phone on for messages from my family and close friends that are actually important. Not having an object (and the people who utilize that object) have such control over my attention has been helpful.

On some level, most of what Pang outlines in this book isn’t new. But it was packaged in a way — using a potent mix of psychology, philosophy and common sense — that resonated strongly with me when I read it. I still have a lot of work to do to control my monkey mind, but I appreciate having a variety of ways to think about how I can consciously use technology to make improvements.

I’m so excited about the wonderful reception there has been to Nonfiction November, a month-long celebration of nonfiction I’m co-hosting with Leslie of Regular Rumination! Throughout the month, we’ll be reading and writing about nonfiction, and encouraging other readers to join us through a series of post topics.

Last week we had a bunch of different people join in to share some of their favorite nonfiction books. You can check out a wrap-up for the week over at Leslie’s blog. This week we wanted to give a variety of options to write, but all focused around sharing several nonfiction books on a single topic:

Be the Expert/Ask the Expert/Become the Expert: Share a list of nonfiction books on a topic you know a lot about. Or, ask for some advice for books on a particular topic. Or, put together a list of nonfiction books on a topic you’re curious about.

One of the topics that I’ve been obsessed with this year is personal productivity and time and attention management. I’m a pretty productive person, but I’ve found that if I’m not careful I lose track of things that need to get done as well as the time I need to do them. I’ve read several books this year on these topic, and purchased even more that I haven’t made time to read yet that I wanted to share with you.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen — This is probably the Bible of the personal productivity movement. In the book, Allen outlines five-stages of workflow and a system designed to address those steps. I read this book near the beginning of the year and implemented parts of Allen’s process, but have since slacked off since only implementing parts of the system doesn’t really allow you to do GTD well. But the basic principles of the method make a lot of sense to me — write things down, put them in the place that makes sense, review your lists, find ways to give yourself reminders in context and keep strong walls around your systems. I’m hoping to revisit this book sometime before the end of the year so I can really do GTD well.

For More: David Allen has made a big business out of productivity. A couple of his other books that I want to pick up are Making It All Work and Ready for Anything.

Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus and Sharpen Your Creative Mind, edited by Jocelyn K. Glei — This book is a collection of short essays by “leading creative minds” about how to create time during a hectic work environment to do strong creative work. The essays are divided into four sections: building a rock-solid routine, finding focus in a distracted world, taming your tools, and sharpening your creative mind. If you’ve read a lot on time and productivity, then many of these essays won’t cover new ground, but a lot of it was new and helpful to me. It was nice to see about how real people have developed strategies for making time for important work.

For More: The organization that put together Manage Your Day-to-Day came out with a second book last month, Maximize Your Potential: Grow Your Expertise, Take Bold Risks and Build and Incredible Career. I bought this one right away, but I haven’t started reading it yet.

168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam — Last year, I read Laura Vanderkam’s most recent book, All the Money in the World. When I started on this productivity kick, I immediately thought to buy her first book, 168 Hours. In the book, Vanderkam takes on the myth that we don’t have enough time to do what we want by talking with people who have managed to find time to do incredible things. I’ve skimmed some sections of this, but haven’t made the time to read the whole thing. But I’m excited to check it out and see what advice Vanderkam can offer.

For More: Earlier this year, Vanderkam published a paperback that collects three ebook shorts she wrote after 168 Hours, What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast. The book looks at strategies for maximizing mornings, weekends and work. I’ve read the section on weekends, which gave me many good ideas about planning to make weekends more invigorating. I’m looking forward to the rest.

The Distraction Addiction by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — I’m not going to say a ton about this book today, since I’m hoping to have a full review up on Wednesday. In brief, Pang looks at ways we can remain connected to ourselves without sacrificing intelligence, attention spans or quality of life. The book was a perfect mix of philosophical and practical advice that resonated strongly with me.

For More: Fellow book lover Rebecca Schinsky has been raving about Clive Thompson’s Smarter Than You Think, which looks to be a book in the same vein. I bought it on impulse and really hope to get to it this month.

I’m not sure if all the time invested in reading about productivity has actually made me more productive. I think I know what the strategies for productivity and focus are, I just continue to struggle to implement them myself. But I want to do better, and think that these books are helping me to slowly get there.

Before we get to the Mr. Linky, a couple of quick programming notes:

• I’ll be doing the wrap up, so check back here sometime on Friday to see a summary of what everyone has been writing about.
• If you post any reviews of nonfiction books this week, include them in the Mr. Linky. I’ll add those to the wrap-up as well.
• If you’re talking about Nonfiction November on Twitter, please use the hashtag #nonficnov for your posts so we can find them. Happy reading!

Time // 2:30 p.m.

Place // My desk

Eating // I just finished some chips and guacamole, which were delicious, and a box of raspberries that I splurged on at the grocery store.

Drinking // Cranberry Blood Orange Black Tea from The Republic of Tea

Reading // It’s been a wonderful week for reading, although I haven’t finished any books. I’m in the middle of several great reads, but since I keep switching between them I haven’t managed to finish a single one. Here’s what I’m working through: Breasts by Florence Williams, Going Clear by Lawrence Wright, In Praise of Messy Lives by Katie Roiphe, and Orange is the New Black by Piper Kernan.

And then there are all of the new books tempting me. I went on a bit of a book-buying being last week and picked up Hunting Season by Mirta Ojio (a look at “immigration and murder in an all american town”) and Smarter Than You Think by Clive Thompson (a look at how technology is making us smarter). I also received a review copy of Pinkerton’s Great Detective by Beau Riffenburgh, which will be out at the end of this week.

Watching // My desire to READ ALL THE THINGS wasn’t helped by my desire to WATCH ALL THE THINGS yesterday afternoon. I caught up on the entire current season of Once Upon a Time (has that show gotten weird or what?) and rented a movie, The Way Way Back, last night.

Cooking // I have some barbecue pulled pork going in our slow cooker and plan to make some oven fries for later tonight. I’m excited!

Blogging // In addition to answering the first weekly question for Nonfiction November, I manged to post two reviews last week — Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg and Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink. Both books were truly excellent, so I hope you’ll check them out.

Promoting // Nonfiction November is off to an amazing start! My co-host, Leslie at Regular Rumination, posted a wrap-up with 13 different posts about favorite nonfiction. I can feel my TBR growing already. I’ll have the next discussion topic up tomorrow, so stop back!

Hating // I feel like I should just change this prompt to something about the weather, since now that Winter Is Coming I basically hate the outside all of the time. But for real, I’m hating that I impulse bought some donut holes at the store yesterday that are tempting me… I’m doing pretty well with Weight Watchers so far (down about six pounds and want to keep the momentum going!).

Loving // The boyfriend and I celebrated our five year anniversary on Monday. I left work a little early so we could go out to dinner at a fancy little Italian place and see a movie. For a present, he stained and customized a step stool for me (I’m short and can’t reach anything our kitchen). The top picture is his etching of Hannah, our cat. It was such a sweet present.

Avoiding // I have like 100 unread e-mails to go through and (mostly) delete, as well as about a weeks worth of comments to catch up on. Procrastination, you are not my friend!

Anticipating // I’m trying to remain optimistic about the week ahead, but I’ve got a lot of personal and work obligations in the evenings that I am not entirely excited for. But that’s ok, since there’s another quite weekend at home waiting for me on the other side!

Happy Sunday, everyone! What are you reading today?

Title: Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
Author: Sheri Fink
Genre: Narrative nonfiction
Year: 2013
Publisher: Crown
Acquired: From the publisher for review consideration
Rating:

Review: I have to admit, I didn’t (and still don’t) know a lot about what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I knew that the levees breaking after the storm caused more damage than the storm itself, and I knew that it took a long time to rescue people who were trapped in the city, but I had no idea the extent of the damage or the horrendous conditions that residents faced. Those facts alone were sobering, and a rather embarrassing indictment of my own news consumption habits.

Trying to make up for my own ignorance was one of the reasons why I picked up Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink. The book also fits right into the niche of investigative journalism that I love to read, so I was both excited and apprehensive to pick up the book, which looks at what happened at a hospital in New Orleans in the days after the hurricane:

After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several health professionals faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths. Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting, unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, bringing the reader into a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing.

Unexpectedly, fellow book blogger Florinda (The 3Rs Blog) and I finished this book at about the same time. We sent a few e-mails back and forth about it, so many of my comments are inspired by her questions and our conversations. You should also check out her review, which is pretty excellent too.

One of the things that frustrated me about the book, but also one of the things that made it a very strong piece of journalistic nonfiction, is the way that Fink resisted speculating about some of what happened at Memorial. For example, in some scenes she would specifically mention the people who were involved. In others, she’d only say “a nurse” or “a doctor,” I assume because she couldn’t verify with anyone in the room who exactly was there.

That’s good, responsible journalism, but also sort of aggravating because it leaves a level of blurring about what actually happened in the hospital. I’d love to sit down with her over a bottle of wine and find out what she really thought about happened after her investigation. As a journalist and a doctor, I am certain she has opinions — but those opinions are kept effectively out of the narrative.

That said, one of the things that struck me about the book is the way Fink quietly implicates people outside of the hospital for how much of this situation went down. The private corporation that owned Memorial was in contact with people inside the hospital shortly after the storm and knew they needed help. But rather than invest their own resources, they chose to rely on the government-supported response until several days later when it became clear there wasn’t a coordinated government rescue coming. You have to wonder if the outcomes at Memorial would have been different if corporate officials had responded differently.

One thing Florinda pointed out that I think is especially smart is that the story of Memorial, although specific and catastrophic, is also representative of many current health care debates — access, economics and complicated decisions about treatment. While what happened at Memorial is extreme, the same decisions get made in other hospitals and other places with different levels of scrutiny.

The book leaves a lot of questions open for interpretation. I’m not sure (and I’m not sure anyone is sure) if what happened was criminal, morally reprehensible, or just the awful result of having to make difficult decisions in the middle of increasingly more terrible conditions. Five Days at Memorial was a difficult, important book that offers many difficult issues to ponder.

P.S. If the length of the book is a little intimidating, you can get much of this story from Fink’s 2010 investigation that won her a Pulitzer Prize. That post includes several great multimedia additions, as well as links to follow up stories about what happened at Memorial.

Other Reviews: S. Krishna’s Books | Love at First Book | River City Reading |

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!