This is a very touchy subject and I often feel myself straddling the fence regarding whether technology is an aid to our daily lives or if it is more of a hinderance. As someone who is not heavily dependent on my phone, laptop, etc. (or so I think), I can definitely understand how constant usage can become a problem especially in the classroom. In contrast, as a researcher, the convenience that these technologies provide not only for research purposes, ease of access, and general connectedness (e.g. checking your email on the go) is something that cannot be denied.
While I generally think people have good intentions in regards to being productive through this notion of being constantly connected, I’m not sure that we are actually being as successful as we think. An example of this is from last year during my first semester in graduate school. Throughout the semester, I would try to work on my final papers a little at a time generally late at night, while watching football, texting my best friend, and gathering articles from the VT library website. Rarely did I ever get anything done and found myself in a hole I felt I couldn’t get out of at the end of the semester. However, I know failure wasn’t an option. Therefore, I gathered all my articles, printed them out, and headed into the library to do some heavy duty writing. I told myself I would only allow breaks to check my phone every hour or so, depending on my progress. I was amazingly able to write two 25-ish page papers in a matter of 72 hours. While this was not necessarily my best work and I wish I would have broken up the work, this was a great lesson to learn early on.
In undergrad, I could multitask with the best of them but looking back, I was never fully engaged in the same way that we have to be in graduate school. I was able to surf the web or browse through Pinterest during my 75 minute courses, and still manage to pull through with a good grade. Trying to continue these habits in graduate school caused me to reevaluate just how much of a distraction technology and multitasking can be overall. While I thought that I was being productive, when faced with a bigger challenge I realize I’m not as good at multitasking as I might think. In the midst of my attempt at high productivity, I was actually hindering myself from putting out my best work.
Pathways to Higher Education 
Playing off your idea here of multi-tasking in classes, this is something I don’t think the graduate climate really allows for. Most of our classes have about ten people in them, and it’s very easy to tell if someone isn’t paying attention, is working on something for another class, or hasn’t read. I think this help fosters active participation and learning, as people start to get self-conscious of the other activities they may be doing during class and redirect themselves back to the conversation. Ideally, it would be nice if technologies weren’t even allowed in these small seminars, but, as a graduate student I believe we have a professional and academic responsibility to fight off these temptations and only use our computer or ipads to pull up notes or readings during class. We chose to continue our educations at the graduate level; presumably this means we should be interested enough in the material to make it 3 hours in a class.
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I agree with you that we think we are good at multitasking (when using various gadgets) but really thats not always the case. I think at the graduate level we are a lot more aware of this (as we don’t have a choice-haha) but honestly, almost weekly I hear from some of my undergraduate students who state that it is so much easier to procrastinate when trying to get stuff accomplished due to all the distractions (phone, social media- and primarily the ease at which they can access them). Most people learn it the hard way that not being self disciplined and what they think is multitasking is hurting them. So one of the things that I intentionally ask my students is to monitor how many hours a day they are on their gadgets, if it is more than the number of hours they sleep for (each day)…Thats a problem and it’s time to start thinking about what needs to change.
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I like the way you shared your experience.I will try to give you a different perspective. When you are writing the paper and not looking at your phone, that means you are balancing your life. You can again engage with your phone after you are done with your writing. So actually you are multitasking in a balanced way, which I think is necessary for any undergraduate/graduate students. With so many distraction around us and thinking about the benefit these technologies provide us, we might have to think about balancing its use in an efficient way. Another way of thinking about your experience can be, if you are bored with writing for many hours at a stretch, technology can help you take a break and distract you for a good reason (to again start writing with a fresh mind). I just shared my perspective. Hope you do not mind.
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I think you touch on a lot of great points about multitasking and being productive. I think multitasking and having these constant connections with the Internet can be really difficult waters to navigate and get through especially in graduate school. Sometimes it takes the hard lesson, but I think sometimes it takes more of expectation check. I try to only multitask when I’m grading and logging in vouchers for my class or doing what is “busy work.” However, I find myself having very unrealistic expectation for when it comes to papers and reading. For some reason, I think I can sit in read all the article for one class in one sitting or I can write a paper without needing a few minutes to step away. I don’t always think about needed ten minutes to step away. In undergrad, I was really good about studying around my attention span. I would study for an hour and then take a fifteen minute break, but I don’t really do that in grad school. I have this “idealized attention span.” I think I can keep going the same way I did without factoring in all the changes that happened in graduate school. We talk about becoming distracted but what is the difference between having an actual focusing problem and just reaching our attention span limits? Maybe we become too productive when we ignore our body’s way of saying take a break.
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We all know the value of google scholar so we can’t say technology is bad. It is good if used properly. However, there are also many pitfalls like you mentioned and as graduate students, we are expected to know this…or we will come to know this to be successful students. That being said, I will agree that many people’s attention spans are quite shorter than it should be. Is it because of technology or are people just bored? I remember my first year chemistry class having to listen to the Professor go on and on for 3 hours. I don’t like chemistry so that would have been a good time to be distracted. So really, it may be that people are try to be too many things at the same time(thanks to technology) but not interested enough to not be distracted.
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