Continuous partial attention

Continuous partial attention describes the state many of us find ourselves in as we try to stay connected to all the different areas of life that are now possible — as a result, we pay only partial attention to anything.

The accompanying stress or tension and, sometimes, decrease in relationship quality may contribute towards our increasing desire and awareness for the opposite: the wholly disconnected times of meditation, yoga, forest bathing, time in the outdoors (the 3-day effect), and other activities that allow us to give our full engaged attention for our wellbeing once more.

Continuous partial attention was coined by Linda Stone .

Also see:

phubbing

Published 5 Oct 2019

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Phubbing

Pillars of hope

Phone zombie

When drinking tea, just drink tea

Context is king

Phubbing: snubbing people for your phone. We've probably all experienced it — heck, we've probably all done it at one point or another — or at least it's likely to be familiar. Someone in a restaurant waiting for their friends to put their phones down. A family gathering where people are no longer talking to each other. A teacher without the attention of their students. A child failing to get the attention of an adult who's trying to process some messages on their phone. Research on phubbing, mostly since the word was coined, says it largely has the effects you'd think it would. The effects vary with who's being phubbed and who's doing the phubbing: bosses and employees, family members, parents and kids, or partners. Whoever's phubbing who, snubbing is a suitable root word for it — it's not so nice to feel snubbed. I learned about phubbing from the Mind over Tech community — they also have a newsletter on forming better digital habits. The word phubbing has the unusual distinction of being created for an advertising campaign to sell a dictionary. Phubbing, you may have spotted, is a portemanteau. For more phone annoyance see halfalogue. See, for example, Knausenberger, J. et al. (2022). Feeling Ostracized by Others’ Smartphone Use: The Effect of Phubbing on Fundamental Needs, Mood, and Trust. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.883901 Also see: phone zombie, continuous partial attention, when drinking tea…Phubbing: snubbing people for your phone. We've probably all experienced it — heck, we've probably all done it at one point or another — or at least it's likely to be familiar. Someone in a restaurant waiting for their friends to put their phones down. A family gathering where people are no longer talking to each other. A teacher without the attention of their students. A child failing to get the attention of an adult who's trying to process some messages on their phone. Research on phubbing, mostly since the word was coined, says it largely has the effects you'd think it would. The effects vary with who's being phubbed and who's doing the phubbing: bosses and employees, family members, parents and kids, or partners. Whoever's phubbing who, snubbing is a suitable root word for it — it's not so nice to feel snubbed. I learned about phubbing from the Mind over Tech community — they also have a newsletter on forming better digital habits. The word phubbing has the unusual distinction of being created for an advertising campaign to sell a dictionary. Phubbing, you may have spotted, is a portemanteau. For more phone annoyance see halfalogue. See, for example, Knausenberger, J. et al. (2022). Feeling Ostracized by Others’ Smartphone Use: The Effect of Phubbing on Fundamental Needs, Mood, and Trust. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.883901 Also see: phone zombie, continuous partial attention, when drinking tea

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