Maggie Jackson, writer and columnist

We’ve all heard of the distracted pilots who overshot the Minneapolis airport. But did you know that medical errors due to distraction place many people in danger every day?

A reader sent me a fascinating dispatch from the medical world on a series of San Francisco-area programs to reduce medical errors while nurses are dispensing medications. Nurses reduced their errors nearly 90 percent at nine Bay-area hospitals over the past year, and a key to the effort lay in new techniques to reduce distractions.

You can imagine what happens. Hospitals are busy places, with the level of care growing more complex by the day. A nurse dispensing medicine at bedside gets interrupted, mixes up one medicine for another, and the results can be fatal. Errors in administering medicine cause 400,000 preventable injuries in hospitals and $3.5 billion in extra medical costs annually, according to the Institute of Medicine.

The focus on distractions at Kaiser South San Francisco Medical Center began with orange vests – similar to those construction workers wear, according to an article in Nursezone, an online news site for the field. Quality-control nurses thought that wearing the vests as a kind of walking “do not disturb” sign could reduce interruptions during pill dispensing.

At first, floor nurses balked, seeing the vests as “cheesy” and “demeaning.” But first results showed that two units cut their errors in half in just four or five months simply by using the vests and educating nurses about reducing distractions.

The word spread throughout the hospital and across the Kaiser system, and a test of nine hospitals reduced medical dispensing distractions about 88 percent in the past year. The larger program includes many more safety steps from checking patient identity twice to turning up the lights and – my particular favorite – turning down the television. (I recall taking my then-two daughter to the dentist for the first time and watching amazed as the hygienist tried to give her a first brushing lesson with the tv blaring. Since then, I’ve always switch off the tv when a dentist or assistant come in the room.)

As a result of the intervention, giving medicines is “a more focused process,” says Suzi Kim, RN, BSN, and a staff nurse at Kaiser West Los Angeles hospital. Without interruptions, “we can think clearly.”

And if hospital staff can think clearly, perhaps they can do more to see and treat the whole human being. I hope so. As important as these anti-distraction programs are, procedures shouldn’t be the end of the story. While medical folks need to focus to do their work correctly and to problem-solve, they also need to restore focus to their interaction with the patient.

That’s the topic of my next blog, which will run tomorrow.

Months ago, Cali Williams Yost had a wish. In her FastCompany blog, she hoped that Distracted would start an attention movement similar to the new environmentalism sparked by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. And indeed, wherever I speak, people everywhere are asking, ‘where do we start? How do we regain our focus and spark the ‘renaissance of attention’ that you describe in your book?’

Well, that nascent movement just may be starting to pick up speed. Some signs:

 People are talking. There are debates and discussions everywhere about our crisis of distraction. At work, people are drilling down into the roots of overload. At home, parents aren’t smiling much anymore about their kids’ addiction to texting. A new study showing the inefficiencies of multitasking is inspiring heated debate. (See my previous post on the research.) This is important. It’s time to come together and focus on the problem. That’s how solutions get sown.

 People are acting.  A Seattle University communications professor recently held an innovative faculty workshop on the impact of distraction on student life. Professors everywhere are frustrated by a chronic lack of attention in the classroom. But organizer Mara Adelman coaxed the discussion beyond griping and finger-wagging.

At the workshop, faculty talked about setting up clear, firm rules on tech use in class and holding kids accountable – no attention, no recommendation. But faculty also did a lot of soul-searching, according to the wonderful website that Adelman set up to keep the momentum of the event going. They talked about collectively working through “technoquette” issues, role modeling focus in their lives, and reminding one another and students how opportunities for connection and conversation are lost amidst epidemic distraction. One faculty member wrote later, “I used to complain about distraction but never spent time to analyze this problem. This workshop made me sit down and find ways to control distraction in my personal life and in the classroom.”

This is exciting, and it’s not a one-off example. I’ve heard of others crafting training events based on my book and other resources. Add to this the uptick in both state and employer bans on driving distracted, and I see the makings of a 360-degree movement.

Write to me if you have ideas on how to move the process forward!

PS – Check out this great blog post by Andrea Saveri, one of my favorite thinkers, on multitasking and the often overly simplistic discussions that erupt when we debate about the impact of technology on our lives. Hear, hear!

No one likes to be called a baby, whether they are age five or 35. That’s one reason why recent comments by British neuroscientist Susan Greenfield that today’s technologies may be “infantilizing the brain” are inspiring heated debate – and plentiful misunderstanding. I don’t agree with all that she said about virtual social relations, but she’s right to raise these fears. Only through well-reasoned public discussion and careful research can we begin to understand the impact of digital life on our social relations and on our cognition. Recently, I was asked by the Neuronarrative blog to comment on the brouhaha:

What did she say? In a statement to the House of Lords and in interviews, Lady Greenfield first pointed out that our environment shapes our highly plastic brains, and so it’s plausible that long hours online can affect us. She’s right. “Background” television is linked to attention-deficient symptoms in toddlers. High stress impedes medical students’ mental flexibility. I agree that “living in two dimensions,” as she puts it, will affect us.

As a result of video games and Facebooking, are we acting like babies, living for the moment, developing shorter attention spans? Again, she’s right to worry. Facebook and video games aren’t passive. Yet much of digital life is reactive. We settle for push-button googled answers, immerse ourselves in “do-over” alternate realities, spend our days racing to keep up with Twitter, email and IM. This way of life doesn’t promote vision, planning, long-term strategizing, tenacity – skills sorely needed in this era.

Consider this issue as an imbalance of attention. Humans need to stay tuned to their environment in order to survive. We actually get a little adrenaline jolt from new stimuli. But humans need to pursue their goals, whether that means locating dinner or hunting for a new job. By this measure, our digital selves may be our lower-order selves. As ADHD researcher Russell Barkley points out, people with the condition pursue immediate gratification, have trouble controlling themselves and are “more under the control of external events than of mental representations about time and the future.” He writes that ADHD is a disorder of “attention to the future and what one needs to do to prepare for its arrival.” Today, as we skitter across our days, jumping to respond to every beep and ping and ever-craving the new, are we doing a good job preparing for the future?

Finally, Lady Greenfield spoke about two types of social diffusion prevalent in digital living. First, she correctly points out that today’s fertile virtual connectivity has a dark side: it’s difficult to go deeply when one is juggling ever-more relationships. This is both common sense, and backed up by research showing that as social networks expand, visits and telephone calls drop, while email rises. Second, Lady Greenfield observed how virtuality distances us from the “messiness” and “unpredictability” of face-to-face conversations. In other words, digital communications can weaken the very fabric of social ties. As I wrote in my book Distracted, an increasingly virtual world risks downgrading the rich, complex synchronicity of human relations to paper-thin shadow play.

If it weren’t for the Net, I likely wouldn’t have found out about Lady Greenfield’s comments, nor been able to respond to them in this way. Yet going forward, we need to rediscover the value of digital gadgets as tools, rather than elevating them to social and cognitive panacea. Lady Greenfield is right: we need to grow up and take a more mature approach to our tech tools.

Addendum: SharpBrains.com recently published part two of my interview with them.

We’re so busy, so “productive,” ticking off items off our agendas, clicking through over-stuffed in-boxes. But in what sense are we productive ? Could it be that we are racing ahead in the most shallow senses of the word?

 This is a particularly timely question as we reap the fall-out from an era of unprecedented, and often unthinking abundance. By unthinking, I mean activity without thought to consequence, to ourselves and others. Activity without perspective, especially on the future. Isn’t that the core of what’s been happening in terms of the environment, crimes like Madoff’s, and even the disintegration of deep family rhythms and rituals?

A short but important column in the U.K.’s Guardian newpaper this past weekend drives to the heart of this question of the cult of busyness.

“Telling ourselves we’re hugely stressed makes us feel important, in demand, even energised; it also gives us permission to avoid confronting deeper issues,” writes Oliver Burkeman.

 He writes, “… busyness is the perfect excuse: if you’re convinced that you’re overstretched and overwhelmed, you’re spared the terrifying prospect of actually doing the things, and making the changes, that you want - or say that you want, since busyness spares you from examining that question, too.”

  Notice the word “terrifying.” Burkeman’s comments remind me of a man I met at a futurist conference who spoke glowingly of his new cell phone that worked globally. (This was a while back.) He told the audience, “Now, I never have to be alone.”

  Yes, it’s often terrifying to be alone with oneself. And it’s terrifying to take responsibility for ourselves - and for the care and keeping of our world.

   Addendum: A site called Sharp Brains and a blog called Neuronarrative both have posted email-interviews with me about Distracted. In both cases, the questions were intriguing.

                 When the Berlin Wall fell, I was a 29-year-old graduate student in international politics at the London School of Economics. As the news hit, many of my younger classmates jumped on flights to Germany to witness history being made. I stayed in the library, unwilling to risk tarnishing my last chance at schooling with a poor grade. I was a dutiful girl. It was a decision I’ve long regretted.

            This was the story I told my 16-year-old daughter the week before the inauguration, after our family unexpectedly was given tickets to the ceremony. The windfall caused an immediate dilemma: the inauguration fell in the midst of Emma’s crucial junior-year mid-term exams.

                 To be in Washington, she’d have to miss one exam, lose two days of precious study time, and endure crowds, cold and who-knows how many hours of travel time, all in a year when grades count heavily for college. Staying home, of course, meant missing one of the most rare political milestones of our time. Emma paused, torn between playing it safe and taking a risk, between sticking to the script and writing herself into the fairy tale.

            Some might find her hesitation astonishing, but believe me, it resonates immediately with many smart, achieving women who still struggle with the dutiful girl within them. They are the women who do all the required reading, shoulder the bulk of the work for the slackers on the team, and who keep silent while their bosses take credit for their ideas. “Good girls” are groomed to play it safe, to do their best, to color inside the lines, to defer to the rules. Doesn’t Cyndi Lauper plaintively sing, “girls just wanna have fun” – because they don’t have enough?

            We all face these moments of inner conflict, times when we hesitate to bend or even break a rule for a higher good – or just for own sweet, selfish moment of enjoyment. Such dilemmas raise age-old, messy questions of self vs. group, conformity vs. rebellion, predictability vs. painful unknowns. Women don’t have the monopoly on experiencing life’s ever-present small, pass-fail tests. But studies do show that women tend to be more risk-averse in many areas of life, from financial decisions to choices of medical treatments. Historically, we’ve kept a fairly tight hold on the market for risk-avoidance. Maybe that’s why we’ve come so far, yet never done more held the Bible for a spouse on inauguration day.

            I’m not knocking duty, conscientiousness, or self-discipline. To slog through the reading, go the extra mile at work, and pass up the party to knuckle down on the project due Monday – that’s a key to achievement at all levels of life, as the brilliant work of Walter Mischel shows us.

            Mischel is a Columbia University professor best known for creating one of the most famous experiments in modern psychology. For decades, he asked 4-year-olds to sit in a room with a bell and a marshmallow, telling them that if they could wait until he returned, they would get two marshmallows. Those who held out became more socially competent, resilient, articulate, attentive teens who scored higher on their SATs and earned more degrees. Self-control may be more important than smarts or ambition in predicting success in life.

            Still, too much or too little self-control is toxic. If nurtured too assiduously, willpower becomes rigidity. Excessively postponing gratification can be a “joyless choice,” warns Mischel. At the same time, if we have too little self-control, “the choice is lost.” Without discipline, we become prey to our whims and impulses, creatures of distraction and greed. To buckle down and tenaciously fulfill your duty, yet know when to change course and take the risky leap:  that’s embracing life, with all its inherent chance and serendipity.

            What happened to Emma? She burrowed into her books through the pre-inaugural weekend, her little sister picked up the slack on chores, her homeroom advisors unhesitatingly urged her to go, and she got to make up the exam she had missed –- in American history. For that one day, she lived – not just studied - history.