Continuous Partial Attention

The morning ritual idea has turned into a "morning discipline." That is, rather than me having a nice relaxing I-don't-have-to-think-because-I-know-what-comes-next kind of morning, I'm instead in an I-have-to-do-this kind of mindset. Today, it was weights; I'd given myself the day off of aikido the day before (normally it's mon-wed aikido in the early morning with my daughter, and tues-thurs-sat weights, with fridays for a run).

Ha. You see how I wrote that? As if there was a "normally". No, this is not a ritual; the only ritual I've been any good at, with the help of my wife, is the 3 minutes of eye-gazing we do every day. 3 minutes is a good number; if you're running late, it's not going to make you significantly later, so there's never really a reason to say "Oh, I can't do it now." And it has helped us find some intimacy in every day.

The point of the rambling about the morning ritual is because of a link off of Kathy Sierra's Creating Passionate Users blog (always one of my favorites; at some point I may have to buy one of her Head First books just to enjoy her writing style). She writes about the "Twitter Curve", and quotes Linda Stone:

"To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention -- CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is that we want to connect and be connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter.

We pay continuous partial attention in an effort NOT TO MISS ANYTHING. It is an always-on, anywhere, anytime, any place behavior that involves an artificial sense of constant crisis. We are always in high alert when we pay continuous partial attention. This artificial sense of constant crisis is more typical of continuous partial attention than it is of multi-tasking."

I've got to wonder if my morning meanders are a part of this. If I'd not just started aikido, I would try something along the lines of dropping everything except the morning ritual. Or perhaps I should change the order, doing sitting for 15 minutes, writing for 15, and then doing whatever exercise/workout is scheduled for the day.

Of course, the twitter curve applies to a lot more...but I'm happily too distracted by work to have to dwell on the more ominous implications.