[geekfactor]

This article reminds me of a TED talk I liked by Barry Schwartz on "The Paradox of Choice."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM

The speaker argues that that freedom and choice are held as unassailable virtues by Western cultures, but in fact research shows that too much choice leads to unhappiness.

If you think of mind wandering as perhaps a product of too much choice for the mind, the two ideas are complementary.

[tsmall]

I didn't think of that video, but I had the same thought. When I have trouble concentrating on what I'm doing, it usually seems to be because I'm thinking about checking what's new online or reading the recent updates on Twitter or checking my email or any of a number of other things. As other people have said, we have almost instant access to more information than ever before. Maybe it will just take a while to figure out how to deal with that without letting the urge to know about everything control us.