Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
There is a second use for knowing this. If those features are what holds attention, they are also the features worth stealing for the things that matter: short stretches instead of long ones, something to look at, visible progress, feedback that arrives now rather than at the end of term. You will not out-design a games studio. You can borrow four of its ideas for a revision session.
The present life is just a game, a diversion, an attraction, a cause of boasting among you (Quran 57:20). The description names fairly precisely what an engineered feed is assembled to produce.
الحديد
ٱعۡلَمُوٓاْ أَنَّمَا ٱلۡحَيَوٰةُ ٱلدُّنۡيَا لَعِبࣱ وَلَهۡوࣱ وَزِينَةࣱ وَتَفَاخُرُۢ بَيۡنَكُمۡ وَتَكَاثُرࣱ فِي ٱلۡأَمۡوَٰلِ وَٱلۡأَوۡلَٰدِۖ كَمَثَلِ غَيۡثٍ أَعۡجَبَ ٱلۡكُفَّارَ نَبَاتُهُۥ ثُمَّ يَهِيجُ فَتَرَىٰهُ مُصۡفَرࣰّ ا ثُمَّ يَكُونُ حُطَٰمࣰ اۖ وَفِي ٱلۡأٓخِرَةِ عَذَابࣱ شَدِيدࣱ وَمَغۡفِرَةࣱ مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ وَرِضۡوَٰنࣱۚ وَمَا ٱلۡحَيَوٰةُ ٱلدُّنۡيَآ إِلَّا مَتَٰعُ ٱلۡغُرُورِ
Bear in mind that the present life is just a game, a diversion, an attraction, a cause of boasting among you, of rivalry in wealth and children. It is like plants that spring up after the rain: their growth at first delights the sowers, but then you see them wither away, turn yellow, and become stubble. There is terrible punishment in the next life as well as forgiveness and approval from God; the life of this world is only an illusory pleasure
Qur’an 57:20read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
People who media multitask more heavily have been found to show a stronger preference for immediate gratification and more fast intuitive rather than deliberate reasoning. It is an individual differences study, so it describes a pattern and does not show that the media produced the preference. Read it as support for building tasks around short and immediate rewards, not as a claim that heavy users have damaged their judgement.
Schutten D, Stokes KA, Arnell KM. (2017). I want to media multitask and I want to do it now: Individual differences in media multitasking predict delay of gratification and system-1 thinking.. Cognitive research: principles and implications doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Attention goes where the pace, the colour and the sense of progress are, so the fix is to put some of those where you need attention.
A ping about a parcel and a ping about your mother's health feel identical in the second before you look. Give that feeling a name, false urgency, and you get a little room.
There is a rough benchmark for homework: about ten minutes a night per school year, so a child in their first year does ten minutes and a final year student tops out near two hours.
Ask everybody, at the start, what they use and how it goes for them there. Not only the ones who arrive with an obvious phone problem.