Amazing article, thanks for sharing it. I am highly interested in this topic, even though I have no professional connection to it. Thanks for your deep dive into it!
It quickly reminded me of Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Deep Work by Cal Newport. It was no surprised to find these people again in your article. In one article of mine, I have reflected on this topic as well and concluded how important attention (for instance created through deep work) can lead to a satisfied life (because of flow). [0]
Can you recommend further reading material on this topic?
John Danaher (the author) posts to Google+ (where I'd first sighted this), and addresses similar questions at times. Csikszentmihalyi is one of the better Western authors on the topic. And good material (accessible, insightful, not facile) is difficult to find. Robert Sopolsky is another favourite. Daniel Kahneman has some useful insights.
I'm finding myself going through much of the background and history of philosophy, media studies, advertising, distraction, and more, over the past year or so, increasingly over the 2016 US election cycle and aftermath. I've also found my own ability to tolerate distraction, and/or response to removing distractions, is profound. Jerry Mander, Niel Postman, and Noam Chomsky have some commentary on this.
I'm particularly interested in the limits and properties of attention. There's some literature here -- David Simon, Alvin Toffler, and via their references, some earlier work.
There's also much in the mindfulness and meditation literature, some good, much not, going back through several thousand years of Japanese, Chinese, and Indian traditions, though you'll also find some of this within Judeo-Christian and Islamic texts, as well as others.
I'm coming to view the state of attention and mindfulness as the necessary quiet in which to detect subtle distinctions -- a cleanroom or highly-calibrated state, if you will. It's not for all purposes, but is essential to some.
It quickly reminded me of Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Deep Work by Cal Newport. It was no surprised to find these people again in your article. In one article of mine, I have reflected on this topic as well and concluded how important attention (for instance created through deep work) can lead to a satisfied life (because of flow). [0]
Can you recommend further reading material on this topic?
[0] https://www.robinwieruch.de/lessons-learned-deep-work-flow/