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Blog post by Ann Michaelsen, January 27, 2012 "Have you ever sat down in front of your computer, expecting a lot of work to be done in a certain amount of time, only to find that you have done nothing work-related at all? Or that you've done a lot - just not what you planned to do? Many people are thinking about the way we spend our time and what gets our attention in this digital age. Howard Rheingold calls it infotention and I've been learning a lot about it recently thanks to his challenging but rewarding online course, "Introduction to Mind Amplifiers." It's a five-week experience using asynchronous forums, blogs, wikis, mindmaps, social bookmarks, synchronous audio, video, chat, and Twitter. Participation requires a serious commitment of time and attention by every member of the learning group. Believe me, the skill of staying focused on what is important certainly proves to be helpful here! The world demands "infotention" Infotention is a word I came up with to describe the psycho-social-techno skill/tools we all need to find our way online today, a mind-machine combination of brain-powered attention skills with computer-powered information filters. ~ Howard Rheingold"

Need to return to this instructional screencast on mindful infotention by Howard Rheingold, 2/6/2010

Blog post by Howard Rheingold on September 1, 2009. "Knowing what to pay attention to is a cognitive skill that steers and focuses the technical knowledge of how to find information worth your attention. More and more, knowing where to direct your attention involves a third element, together with your own attentional discipline and use of online power tools - other people. Increasingly, most of the recommendations that make it possible to find fresh and useful signals amid the overwhelming noise of the Internet are social media - online networks that make possible social exchange and relationship. Tuning and feeding our personal learning networks is where the internal and the technological meet the social. "

Excellent resource page for building intelligence dashboard using RSS feeds, Yahoo Pipes, persistent searches, etc. Rheingold uses short videos (usually <10 minutes) to staircase steps for building the dashboard.

Leo Babauta on single-tasking and how he is going to do a better job with it

Great article by Jessi Hempel on turning off social media for a month and Wired readers who did the same and the impact it had on their lives. Wired, 8.5.15

Focus at Will--a new music service that helps people focus on their writing, editing, researching, etc. by Natalie Houston, 12.3.2015