Models | The Perfect Response

How can we keep our focus when our informational world has paced almost everything at hyper speeds?

By definition, a distraction is a detour. It happens when the continuity of some effort is broken by the need to shift attention elsewhere. Since this website is dedicated to communicating in “the age of distraction”—be it advertising clutter, too many texts and e-mails, or the frenetic pace of overscheduled lives—we should have an interest in persons who resist all the cultural noise. For the record, the problem isn’t entirely new. The ballad “Over The Rainbow” (1939) was initially cut from the Wizard of Oz because some bright light in the studio’s front office thought that it slowed things down.

The Advantages of Linear Thinking

One answer to this problem is to discipline ourselves to follow a more linear pathway, even though cultivating this kind of thinking cuts against the grain of the culture. And it’s not easy to tell the world to take a hike while we muse alone in our own self-made bubble.

Linear thinkers take many forms: avid readers content to devote large chunks of time to a single work of fiction or non-fiction, artists happily left alone to work through decisions that will end up on canvass or as musical notation. We’ve enshrined the image of the “mad scientist” as a loner following the threads of their research with long hours in the lab, leaving family and friends to fend on their own.

If previous generations were more focused, our Twitter world is more scattered. The folks that track these things indicate that the average American checks his or her phone nearly 100 times a day. Much of American television is predicated on breaking for a range of short commercials: so many, in fact, that a viewer can momentarily forget what they were watching. And the programs themselves are edited to the beat of a fast song, with shooting angles and cutaways coming every few seconds. Fast cutting, where camera changes may happen every two seconds, is in style. The long single ‘take’ is relegated to a few auteur film directors who are willing to gamble that an unbroken shot can be interesting.

Linear thinking is the realm of the problem-solver, the creator, the owner of a consciousness that will discover and understand what a fragmented thinker may never find.

George Frederick Handel wrote the great oratorio Messiah in spurt of nearly unbroken concentration, finishing in just over three weeks. And imagine the sustained effort required by William Lamb’s architectural firm, who designed and prepared drawings for New York City’s Empire State Building in an incredibly short two weeks. The iconic skyscraper was completed in just over a year. Such dedication to a single task can be scaled down to what many writers sense when they notice the time that vanishes when they are absorbed in their work.

The linear thinker routinely does what many vacationers hope for: a chance to clear the decks of everyday clutter sufficiently to see an unobstructed view of the horizon. Undisturbed concentration gives them power. It may happen when we are walking, watching a sunset, or perhaps sitting alone on a boat dock with nothing else to distract. These are the realms of the problem-solver, the creator, the owner of a consciousness that will discover and understand what a fragmented thinker may never find. Unbroken attention allows a first effort to build on the synergies that begin when scattered thinking begins to see connections and consequences that others may miss.

The Mistake of Pushing Complexity Out of Bounds

This is the reverse of the kind of segmentation of effort that is now embedded in our work and so much of our media. A reader’s time on a single web page is usually under a minute. And we are getting cues from all over that we’re not noticing our preference for hyper-compression. Consider, for example, the New York Times reporter who recently noted in passing that an individual “argued” a point “on Twitter.” Really? Can a person “argue” in the traditional sense of the term—which includes asserting a claim and its good reasons—in a verbal closet of fewer than 500 words? Twitter imposes absurd limitations on the expression of a complete idea, and is easily matched by political ads that “argue” public policy in 30-seconds, television news “sound bites” from policy-makers that average around eight seconds, and the de-facto editing style of commercial television that cuts individual shots down to lengths of two or three seconds. All of this means that there is no time for enlarge on the complexities of issues or attitudes.

We now think of a Ted Talk with a maximum running length of 18 minutes as an “in depth” discursive form. No wonder some of my students thought of a 70-minute lecture or a 40- page chapter as the functional equivalent of a long slog across a vast and empty space. All of this makes our dawning recognition that reading levels are falling even more worrisome. One of the great virtues of juvenile and adult literature is that the process is still mostly linear. Like the rest of us, kids are easily hooked on continuous and sequential narratives.

Sherlock Holmes wikimedia — **_{^{Sherlock Holmes}}**

Interestingly, one of the features sometimes seen in a person at the higher end of the autism spectrum scale is a consuming and total passion for one thing. Subjects on the spectrum are especially known for their laser-focused interests, making them a challenging fit in a culture that rewards frequent pivots to completely different activities. But the habit of extended attention can be a blessing. Psychological historians believe we can thank mild forms of autism for the achievements of Mozart, Beethoven, Charles Darwin, and Lewis Carroll. And it is surely the dominant psychological trait of the world’s favorite sleuth, Sherlock Holmes.

Given the misplaced importance of multi-tasking across the culture, it makes sense that there is building interest in novel ideas like the self-driving car. Negotiating a ribbon of open road is a literally a linear process that seems increasingly beyond the capacities of many drivers. It’s probably better to let a computer take care of a task that many aren’t mentally equipped to manage themselves.

One small suggestion for moving back to a state of extended consciousness on one thing is to pick a major orchestral work or favorite writer, making it a point to ‘swim’ in their waters for more than a few minutes. The trick is to not take on another task for an alternate source of attention. You will hear or see more. The hard truth is that thinking well about a subject needs effort and concentration.

_{Mark Twain on one of the porches he loved}

Many American homes built in the late 1800s and later had porches intended to help their owners escape the heat, and—not so incidentally—make it easier to keep in touch with neighbors.

Last month the U.S. Surgeon General issued a health advisory declaring loneliness a “public health epidemic.” There is obscure but useful reference point for this finding. Homes that once facilitated connection with neighbors now often do the reverse.

It was once harder to feel isolated when neighbors were just a few feet away. Fences, open space, and virtual media have now mostly replaced the humble front porch as a place that could knit neighborhoods together. Its harder to withhold the routine courtesies of acknowledgment when the family next door is just a few feet away. In an emergency, a neighbor can be a life safer. But on any given day, even ordinary exchanges can help a person feel anchored to a place.

The Porch Tradition

Any number of older Americans can remember growing up in towns with housing stock that was built in the first half of the 20th Century and even earlier. Many lived in homes with a front porch. In our older cities we still see plenty of bungalows near the street and close to nearby neighbors, each with a covered space in the form of a rectangle of maybe eight by fifteen feet: enough for a few chairs and a bench-swing. This extension to a house provided shade and a breeze. It also allowed people to dry off or stay out of the sun as they moved from the sidewalk to the home’s front room. This architectural feature is especially an enduring remnant of America’s love of the Victorian style. A porch was another chance to break up a home’s front walls with decorated brackets, pillars, railings and generous eaves.

From this perch it was also easier to see and be seen. The pre-suburban vernacular of brick or wood-frame homes were usually on small lots and near a neighbor’s own elevated and welcoming porch. Every block had its own variations: some expansive, some small. They were duplicated in homes of a similar vintage from Washington D.C. to Chicago, from Minneapolis to Memphis. A balustrated extension of a home was its own version of a party line, where greetings and gossip were easily exchanged. My own humble porch in a newer townhouse honors the customary elevated space with a bead board ceiling, a few circular pillars, and enough room for a few chairs and a side table. Few can pass by on the nearby sidewalk without getting or giving an acknowledgment. Remember the gauntlet of comments Atticus Finch drew as he made his way on foot from his Maycomb, Alabama home down the street to the courthouse?

Her own little brick veranda was my grandmother’s preferred spot for reining in exuberant grandkids. On warm summer nights that Clermont Street porch in Denver was a gathering place for family and– maybe if we were lucky–a root beer float. Kids also spilled onto the solid porch railing and small front yard that it overlooked. For a short time I lived in the same style of house before moving to a newer 50’s box shorn of any inviting space in the front.

The older New Jersey town where I now live is made up of duplex or row houses built mostly in the late 1800s, nearly every one of which still has a covered space within a few feet of a neighbor’s matching version. Few of the houses in the nearby commuter suburbs even bother, shifting all the action to the backyard. In those fat lots neighbors are separated by much more distance and—often—a six-foot-high stockade fence in the backyard: a virtual requirement if you buy a home in California.

Obviously, air conditioning and the vast expanses of newer suburbs made it easier for builders to turn their backs on the street. In addition, an ersatz colonial or modernist home aspired to look self-sufficient and private. Among other influences, Hollywood made each home seem like it should be its own island surrounded by leafy isolation. Many adopted the look of a little manor house, with a few decorative pillars around the front door, but nothing that would be mistaken for a full porch. Indeed, an authentic colonial home built in the 1700s could be just as austere, all the better to separate the dirty streets of horses and wagon traffic from the front parlor.

Even so, early turn of the Century porches remain plentiful in virtually every corner of the country. And many buyers of new properties want them back. Few other nations have defined their prototypical homes so clearly than with a covered space open to the street. It has been a durable enactment of the unique American penchant for lingering and connecting.

The Perfect Response

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION IN A DISTRACTED AGE

Category Archives: Models

Our Fragmented Consciousness

The Front Porch Network