All together now--------Focus

I find that it is harder to get many people to focus on the task at hand whether it is ringing me up at the cashier, taking my order, listening long enough to get their phone fixed, etc. Now granted the world is full of many distractions, but you must focus to get things done efficiently, if people have to keep repeating themselves because you are only half listening then whatever you are doing takes twice as long. Add to that, there is an umbilical cord attachment for many nowadays to their phone to text and/or twitter. They feel naked without their phone, they feel they must immediately respond if they receive a text, therefore they even text during business meetings ala Crackberries, or their children twitter and/or text away during class.
Some people say oh i'm just multitasking, oh you mean like that train engineer in Southern California who killed people because he was also texting. Hmmm that ddid not work out very well. For years now we have medicated our children because they have a short attention span, perhaps we should focus on the problem instead of trying to prescribe it away. How well is a child going to learn if he does not train to focus. Focusing is an acquired skill, acquired by many in childhood, although apparently more in short supply nowadays. Now this lack of focusis showing up in adults in their 30's who have become what used to be called scatter brained, it is even hard to carry on a conversation because they skip around like a scratched record.
These people are by no means in the majority, but do comprise unfortunately a growing percentage of people. It seems to be getting worse, I even notice more and more young people talk as if they have a slack jaw, no emotion in their voice, almost like a lack of passion, is that the Ritalin? We need to be careful about overprescribing medicines. Sure it is easy to deal with a problem by just giving a pill, that is what happened all too often in nursing homes, until it became a scandal. Well it is scandalous what is happening to our young people, they are now controllable with medication, but they are flat, still unfocused and not learning well. Time to stop the madness, think about it.