The Dangers of Emailing, IMing, Texting, Calling ...

New studies show, yet again, that technology makes us stupid. Or at least less effective. And that the best way to accomplish something successfully -- whether it's driving a car, crossing a street, standing in a train station, or writing a book -- is to turn off the tech. I've blogged about the problems that come with constant emailing several times in the past. Now, today's New York Times reports on the newest studies into how multitasking messes with your brain:

"The human brain, with its hundred billion neurons and hundreds of trillions of synaptic connections, is a cognitive powerhouse in many ways. “But a core limitation is an inability to concentrate on two things at once,” said René Marois, a neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University.

"Mr. Marois and three other Vanderbilt researchers reported in an article last December in the journal Neuron that they used magnetic resonance imaging to pinpoint the bottleneck in the brain and to measure how much efficiency is lost when trying to handle two tasks at once. Study participants were given two tasks and were asked to respond to sounds and images. The first was to press the correct key on a computer keyboard after hearing one of eight sounds. The other task was to speak the correct vowel after seeing one of eight images."

There was no delay when participants did the tasks one at a time, but when researchers asked them to do tasks two at a time, both tasks were completed slower. This isn't surprising. What's interesting to me is that they actually pinpointed the area in the brain where this bottleneck takes place, and showed that this delay happens regardless of what multitasking you're doing, and which senses it involves. So listening to something (say, music with lyrics, or a television) while reading something causes the same bottleneck effect in the brain as trying to read two things at once. Which is very interesting. The solution, according to the Times:

"These experts have some basic advice. Check e-mail messages once an hour, at most. Listening to soothing background music while studying may improve concentration. But other distractions — most songs with lyrics, instant messaging, television shows — hamper performance. Driving while talking on a cellphone, even with a hands-free headset, is a bad idea."

No big surprise there. But still, very interesting.

Blackberry Addiction 'Similar to Drugs'

They don't call them crackberries for nothin: A study just out from Rutgers University says those Blackberry email devices you see attached to everyone's hips (including mine) "can be so addictive that owners may need to be weaned off them with treatment similar to that given to drug users," and that Blackberries are "fuelling a rise in email and internet addiction, with sufferers able to survive only a few minutes without checking for new mail." Reports on the study call Blackberries "seriously damaging to mental health," and offer this as a diagnostic aid: "One key sign of a user being addicted is if they focus on their Blackberry ignoring those around them." Professor Gayle Porter, the scientist who lead the study, says becoming Blackberry addicted can be "devastating." And they say someday soon, we may start seeing lawsuits over this.

It's certainly true that our culture has become email-obsessed to a pathological degree. But I don't think Blackberries are the problem. I actually think they can be part of the solution. I spend far far far (far) too much time dealing with email. It's safe to say I get several hundred emails a day. For years, many of the messages I've written started with the sentence, Sorry for my slow response, but [insert excuse here, usually it's I was out of town and my inbox is now filled with hundreds of unanswered messages I'm wading through]. Because of all this, I was worried about getting my new Blackberry. I knew it might take over my life. But in fact, it's liberated me: I now don't have to wade through hundreds of unanswered emails when I come home from traveling, because I can respond to them while I'm away. Before I got a Blackberry, I spent about half of each day responding to emails, but now sometimes I go all day without even turning on my email program (because I can see if any important emails arrive with my Blackberry and ignore the rest), which allows me to focus on my writing when I'm at my computer instead of my emailing. Plus, the Blackberry forces me to keep my responses short and fast, because you can only type so much on those tiny keyboards. So honestly, I feel like the Blackberry has helped fix my email problem.

It's true, some people might find it strange that I email while dog-walking, or that I often exchange 20 or more emails a day with one particular friend -- who shall remain nameless -- and that we've been known to do this when we're both sitting in the same room. People might find it suspicious that, after this same friend convinced me to buy my Blackberry and helped me pick it out via telephone from hundreds of miles away, he started sending regular emails saying things like, "how is your berry?" and "don't you just love your blackberry," to which I always responded, "yes" within seconds. Recently, on a particularly Blackberry-heavy day, we both noted that we seemed to be developing tendonitis in our thumbs. But we've agreed: We're not addicted. Our Blackberries have helped us get our lives back (we've been emailing like this for years, now we just spend less time at our desks doing so). This morning, another good friend -- who shall also remain nameless, but who I'll call "Dinty" -- forwarded this article with a note saying he's, "consumed by guilt" over over the fact that he and our other friends have become "classic 'enablers" by not taking our blackberries and locking them away. But he has nothing to worry about: He sent that email nearly an hour ago and I have even replied yet. I'm so not Blackberry addicted! What more proof could a person possibly need?!

On Writing: Country Roads, Take Me Home

So I’ve done it again, I’ve fled New York City for a hundred-year-old West Virginia farmhouse perched on an Appalachian foothill overlooking the Ohio River Valley. (The picture above is currently my favorite shot of the view from my writing desk.) There isn’t a phone line or internet connection in sight, which (aside from the beauty and the silence and the miles of open spaces where my dog can run and chase deer while I sit on the porch swing) is precisely why I’m here. That, and finishing my book. But those two things go hand-in-hand these days, because apparently I have to be miles from an Internet connection to actually spend an entire day writing.

I have no idea how this happened: At one point in my life, I'd get a few emails, I'd respond to a few emails, no big deal. Then a few turned in to lots which turned into hundreds, and now it’s just out of control. A friend of mine wrote an article for Time Out New York last summer about how electronic communication is ruining our ability to concentrate. The fact that he used my out-of-control-email-life as the lead to his story was probably not a good sign. A psychiatrist in London has actually done a clinical trial showing that email does more damage to a person’s concentration and IQ than smoking pot:

“emails … have an addictive, drug-like grip. Respondents' minds were all over the place as they faced new questions and challenges every time an email dropped into their inbox ... the effect ... was the equivalent, over a day, to the loss of a night's sleep.

"This is a very real and widespread phenomenon," said Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist from King's College, London University, who carried out 80 clinical trials … The average IQ loss was measured at 10 points, more than double the four point mean fall found in studies of Cannabis users ... Dr Wilson and his colleagues found a compulsion to reply to each new message, leading to constant changes of direction which inevitably tired and slowed down the brain. In fact, it is a recipe for muddled thinking and poor performance."

I buy that completely: When I got to West Virginia almost two weeks ago, it took several days before I could just sit down and write without that weird nagging feeling like, There’s something else I should be doing right now … emails to read, emails to reply to. Writers don’t just sit and write anymore, do they? Of course they do. They just have to go to the middle of nowhere, miles away from any internet connection to do it.

A few weeks ago, during a conversation with an editor, I was talking about how hard it is to juggle a book, freelance writing, teaching, public appearances, and the many emails that result from it all. She very wisely said, “The key to life is focusing on what’s important, not what’s urgent.” The light bulb that sentence set off in my head was more like a carillon bell. This is the problem with email, and it’s the problem with writing books: An email comes in, someone asks a question, however small, and for some reason we feel we must respond within minutes, or at least days. That’s urgent. But it might not be as important as, say, the book you’ve spent the last eight years of your life trying to write. The book that may not be due in minutes or even days, but that is due in a month. I asked this editor where she came up with that brilliant phrase -- I figured she’d say something about it being a Buddhist meditation or something. But no. “A time management specialist came into the magazine,” she told me. “He sat down in my office and the first thing he said was, don’t check your email.” Then he gave her that line about the urgent and the important.

So why am I telling you this, aside from it being a good quote. I’m telling you this because, secretly, that's why I started this blog. It's my way of staying in touch with friends and family and the outside world while I'm off focusing on one very important thing: My book. It's my way of saying, please forgive me while I write my heart out and only go online a couple times a week. I hope everyone understands. Please, keep emailing me: I love reading them, and I promise I’ll respond. It just might take a little while.

Of Note: Robotic Camel Jockeys

After being accused of human rights violations for using children as camel jockeys, Gulf Arab officials have unveiled the robotic camel jockey in an attempt to "bring order to the national sport" of camel racing:

The US State Department and human rights groups have raised the alarm over the exploitation of children by traffickers who pay impoverished parents a paltry sum or simply resort to kidnapping their victims.

The children, mostly from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or Pakistan, are then smuggled into the oil-rich Gulf states. They are often starved by employers to keep them light and maximize their racing potential. Mounting camels three times their height, the children - some as young as six - face the risk of being thrown off or trampled ... [a] Swiss company was paid around $1.37 million to produce the robots, which will cost just under $5,500 apiece ... Qatar's main camel race carries a prize of more than 190,000 dollars, 10 percent of which goes to the parent or guardian of the jockey, who also gets a monthly salary of up to 400 dollars.

On Writing: The Dangers of Blogging

I started writing this post as a reply to Eric, who posted a great comment to yesterday's blog (thanks Eric!). He linked to this discussion, saying I might re-think my plan to start blogging lest it interfere with my writing. His post made me laugh, especially since only moments earlier, I got this very astute note from one of my editors who read yesterday's blog: "I couldn't help but note that you left off your list of the ways a writer on deadline can distract herself one important item: start a blog."

It's true. I'm a procrastinator. This is actually what's behind the nickname Goose, which I'll get to later. Blogging can suck you in, and it can be a major procrastination tool, no doubt. But I'm also one of those writers who actually works her ideas out on paper, so for me, this blogging thing feels like it might actually be productive for my writing. Especially since I'm in the midst of a book right now, which means I can't take on any new stories, even though I have new ideas every day. I feel like blogging is a way of putting thoughts and experiences on paper for future use. I definitely hear what the person in Eric's post is saying: That once you write an idea it's gone, out there. I know a lot of writers who work that way. But I don't. My ideas are more likely to be gone if I don't write them down. My head is too full of my book right now; I have to let the other stuff out or I'll explode.

I've been working on this book for years, and I love doing it, but it's made me stifle so many things I'd otherwise write. I imagine it's a lot like trying to write with a full time job: My dad did this when I was growing up. He worked full time, raised kids, and wrote novels on the side. And he wrote any little thing he could, any chance he got -- on scraps of paper in the doctor's office waiting room, or while sitting it the car waiting to pick me up from school, or at red lights (no joke). That's how this feels to me. Right now, my book is my full time job, and I'm very very fortunate to have a full time job I love to a nearly psychotic level. But I still have all those other thoughts in my head; blogging is me getting those out at the red lights. But it's also a way of practicing my chops, getting my fingers in motion -- I find it very hard to sit down at the start of a day and just write and write and write (and write) on my book. Blogging helps get my fingers in motion, wakes up my writing voice (I used to do that with email, but because so much of my work world happens over email, I've long stopped using it as a warm up because I have so many work emails to deal with).

The key, I think, is just using the blog to vent the system -- to get a few little things out when necessary -- without letting it take over. To that end, I'm only allowing myself 15 minutes of blogging time a day. And I'm using it as a way to communicate with friends and colleagues about what's going on in my life, to cut down on my email time ... that's where the real danger lies: Email is the nemesis of my muse. I can blog for 15 minutes, but once I'm online, I can email for 6 hours and still not catch up with everything in my inbox ...

So, on that note, back to the book.