Notes on Being Busy, Meditation ⇥ newyorker.com

Maria Konnikova for The New York Times:

An exercise in mindfulness can also help with that plague of modern existence: multitasking. Of course, we would like to believe that our attention is infinite, but it isn’t. Multitasking is a persistent myth. What we really do is shift our attention rapidly from task to task. Two bad things happen as a result. We don’t devote as much attention to any one thing, and we sacrifice the quality of our attention.

Giles Harvey, for The New Yorker:

It can sometimes seem as though modern life has no room for four-and-a-half-hour-long experimental operas or difficult poetry; but this is a mistake. In a world of speed and distraction, the slow, demanding art work is more indispensable than ever, for it holds out the possibility of those elusive commodities: stillness, clarity, and peace.