Distraction

Its not all about time management. People say that all you need is proper time management and you can do the stuff you need to do, and make room for stuff you want to do. For me it's not that simple anymore. By it's name it already points out the fact that your time is limited, and it's just that - there isn't enough time anymore to think and do everything. It feels like a crowded room in my head, with a million things pushing and shoving. Simply put, it's information overload.

I started thinking about this after one of my philosophy classes. Sir Pasco gave great insights and challenged us to philosophize on our own. But before I got around to reflecting on the things he said, my mind was already racing to different things: what does poverty as entitlement failure mean - I have to pick up readings for my development management class - father Dacanay will give a quiz tomorrow about conscience/3 - I wonder what items I should use for Medusa (DotA speak). And as I cycled through those different thoughts I realized I lost the insights I had about our philosophy discussion.

And so in the course of my crowded line of thought I came to question why my thoughts were so crowded in the first place and remembered the comment of Sir Pasco. He said that people don't philosophize anymore because information is right there at our fingertips. People choose not to think anymore because information is so accessible.

Convenience has turned us to information sponges instead of hunter/gatherers, and we are bombarded by information through television, the internet, newspapers and radio. It's information overload. I can follow what's happening to the rest of the world so easily - and it's great to be aware, but trying to grapple with the entirety of the global situation while absorbing academic lessons is like a rag trying to absorb some spilled milk while being hosed down by a garden hose. Information is beyond being at our fingertips. It's being shoved down our throats whether we like it or not.

This phenomenon of information overload gives a different dimension to the concept of time management for students. We face multiple subjects and tens (if not hundreds) of pages of readings for each one. After taking to account time spent in the bathroom, eating, sleeping, traveling, and doing schoolwork, there is only so much time you can burn reading in a day, and what will the quality of it be? After reading through polsci, shift to theology, after that a major subject and after that to philosophy. In the process of cramming information into the brain I'll be astounded if no detail was forgotten. And how about those subjects that require more than memorization? Like computers with multiple running programs, our attentions can only be divided so much before our brains start slowing down.

The life of the modern student of course is not confined to academics. We spent a good chunk of our lives in the internet, the information superhighway. The TV too is a distraction. All these things fight for our attention. And what of those books we would like to read?

They accuse our generation of being apathetic. I believe this is partially a product of modern society that demands us embrace the globalization of information accessibility. We have to (or choose to) isolate ourselves from the rest of the world to concentrate on our priorities, whatever they maybe.

I guess this is my crude attempt to philosophize on my own, on the question why I don't have time to philosophize in the first place, which apparently doesn't make for a good essay. It's because I'm distracted by so many things to think about that I don't have time to think about all of them anymore, even if I wanted to.