"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninty-nine percent perspiration." - Thomas Edison

The above quote is one from the article, "Work Ethic 2.0: Attention Control" by Mike Elgan. This particular article can be found here.

I actually immensely enjoyed this article about the evolution of work ethic. This is because it has a lot of answers and questions that I had been questioning and searching for myself. I was delighted that this problem is not just a personal one - but an epidemic. Perhaps "delighted" isn't the word, since it is quite a serious problem, but I was relieved at the fact that there wasn't something wrong with me. In short, this article is basically a portrayal of how technology has affected us, in terms of our working patterns. He expertly describes the change, what the aftermath is and compares & contrasts our work ethics from nowadays to way back in our grandparents' days.

Instead of using the power of technology for good, we are constantly Facebooking, Twittering, Youtubing, Myspacing, and using the convenience of our technological advancement - for distractions. It's not like we purposely set out to do so, as companies worldwide aim to compete for our "attention". And from the looks of it, they definitely seem to have caught it. It's like waving a piece of candy in front of a sugar-obsessed diabetic.

Which brings me to another point he displays. Our need for attention control. What this means is that although technology is becoming so advanced and convenient for us to seek any amusement possible in just a click, we should possess qualities of self-control sufficient enough to ignore these distractions or at least limit them.

"Hard work is still a virtue, but now takes a distant second place to the new determinant of success or failure in the age of Internet distractions: Control of attention." Is a quote from the article that I firmly agreed with.

Another question he brings up, which I ponder as well, is the question of what the children of this technological era will grow up to be. As he stated, "Kids now grow up with the whole range of distractions, from big-screen TVs to video games to cell phones to PCs in their rooms." Which possesses great truth to the matter. How are these young ones to cope if all they've ever known is distractions? I had speculated this much before ever reading this article, due to my immense procrastination problem. I absolutely detest it, but there seems to be no end to it.

But Mike Elgan suggests otherwise. There may actually be a cure for all these distractions. And it's teaching an old dog new tricks. What this amounts to is that we must keep all the work ethics taught to us by our grandparents & parents, but elevate ourselves to a whole new level. Humans are superbly known for our adaptive states, so to beat this cause, we must adapt to a new

priority work ethic - and this is to control our level of attention. In order words, fight the urges to go on Facebook to check if your friend has a new profile picture, or Youtubing videos of people putting mentos in coke.

And this idea, it's so crazy it just might actually work. :)

Signing off,

- Serena