This was all going on, of course, while I had a bunch of work to do that I was consciously avoiding. Could it really have been that easy to distract myself? A thousand times, yes.
I understand that historians will look back at this time and call it the dawn of the "Information Age", and today's 20-somethings will have been the first generation to be born into it. Though most agree that living in this age allows people "to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously" (thanks Wikipedia!), I think that access goes worlds beyond just knowledge. Broadly speaking, 20-somethings have never known a time when it wasn't extremely simple to scratch a curiosity itch or consume some sort of content (music, video, text, etc.)
Unfortunately, I think this can be a double-edged sword in the hands of many. For example, during college, I watched friends blow-off course work, bomb tests, and in many cases, even social interactions because their attention was so easily diverted by the myriad stimuli around them. In the work world, I see the same thing. And of course, as I alluded to above, it would be pretty dishonest of me if I didn't state that I fall victim to distractions like this on a semi-regular basis. In all this, I'm not surprised that our parents generally possessed better work ethic!
So what can we do to rise above it? One strategy that I'm trying is to set limits for myself on how much time I waste each day on Facebook or watching that third Seinfeld re-run. I've been trying to give myself 1.5 hours a day during the week. I recognize that this is probably not getting to the root of the issue, though - somewhere inside, I still have a tendency to procrastinate. It doesn't seem like I'm alone, either .
So, really, why do we get so easily diverted from the task at hand? I'm not entirely certain, but I just saw on Facebook that someone posted 50 new photos...
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