Editor’s Choice: I Can’t Choose Properly Any More

I’ve reached a conclusion that I’ve brainwashed myself. I can’t think properly any more and it’s ruining my gaming. I can’t go more than twenty minutes whilst sitting at my desk playing something without having to scratch a very subtle itch: the itch of worthless information.

I’m playing Torchlight for the 360 at the moment for the Nukezilla review. It’s a game where you go down a dungeon of sorts and make steady, satisfying progress (and find loot; lovely, lovely loot). Yet, despite the interest and joy the game gives me, if an email comes in I’ll drop everything and go read it. Even if the email is worthless and just a waste of time.

The worse part is I didn’t even notice until now, and this has probably been happening for years.

Right now, as I write this, I can see the row of little icons in my bookmarks bar, all casually sitting there looking the other way like cats, knowing I’m all but lusting after the worthless, imaginary information drug they provide. My attention span isn’t reduced, it’s got a sense of entitlement.

I’m aware I’m not the only one with this problem, but my situation is one I can actually understand. First, the cause: I work and play at the same desk. In front of me there are three screens. I sit here for the majority of the day (when I’m not at the gym, driving fast cars or having sex with a multitude of women who aspire to be models but have been rejected so many times that their self esteem is in the gutter). All day, everyday, for years I’ve had icons in every corner of the screen slowly brainwashing me. I’ve practically brainwashed myself.

Along the top bar I have Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Wire, Reddit, Hacker News and a bunch of news sites. Then I have the Gmail indicator, so I know exactly when a new email has arrived. Along the bottom I have Pidgin, Skype and Gmail (again, telling me the very second something happens). Across my desk I have my auto-updating Kindle and my phone (from back in the days when people used them). And it all builds up. It makes my brain simply unable concentrate on one thing for long periods of time.

Symptom: I’ll pretty much stop what I’m doing and read an email whenever it comes in. My inbox is empty, and I like that as it’s quite zen. But am I doing it because I want a calm inbox, or because when I have email that’s unread I’m reminded in multiple places (on my screen twice, my iPod, my Kindle to an extent) and that niggles away at my brain?

“Hey, hey John! Joooooohn! You have something, some new information is here! Go on, it’ll only take a moment, put down that boring work or that boring game, come play with me!”

I am here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to control his own attention? “No,” says the man in Google, “it belongs to the email.” “No,” says the man at Facebook, “it belongs to your Friends.” “No,” says the man at Reddit, “it belongs to DogFort.”

It’s not simply that my attention gets diverted frequently, there’s ways to deal with that, but it’s also that my priorities get all broken. Obviously in the middle of the day I should do work. If Nukezilla-related emails come in, a rational person would let them wait until I’m free. But when a dozen emails come in, a Skype message and two people try to chat to me on Gtalk, my brain fills up the seven slots of something it can hold, and gives up.

Your brain, once it has more information than it knows what to do with, simply throws in the towel, as this fantastic Newsweek article discusses. And whilst I’m not overloaded much of the time, it does happen in small increments throughout the day. I’m forever being distracted, I’m forever craving distraction, and I’m forever unable to work out which distraction is important and which isn’t.

To bring it back to gaming, on a very basic level impacting how long I can play one game for before checking my emails, before checking my twitter @replies. It’s caused by both the culture we live in, and our own — my own — complacency, and frankly I don’t much like it. I want to be drawn into the mines of Torchlight, I don’t want to have to bring my iPhone with me to make sure I’m aware when somebody Likes a photo of me from a party last week.