MCS 115: Oral and Interpersonal Communication

Productivity speaker, trainer, and author Maura Nevel Thomas shows you how to master attention management with practical strategies that make an immediate impact. Thomas wrote this volume as part of the Ignite Reads series.

Includes relevant chapter: "How-to, Part 1: Attention Management and Procrastination"

In this work, Michael Posner, a pioneer in attention research, presents the science of attention in a larger social context, which includes our ability to voluntarily choose and act upon an object of thought. The volume is based on fifty years of research involving behavioral, imaging, developmental, and genetic methods. It describes three brain networks of attention that carry out the functions of obtaining and maintaining the alert state, orienting to sensory events, and regulating responses.

Veteran pastor and teacher Arthur Boers offers a critical look at the isolating effects of modern life that have eroded the centralizing, focusing activities that people used to do together. He suggests ways to make our lives healthier and more rewarding by presenting specific individual and communal practices that help us focus on what really matters. These practices--such as shared meals, gardening, hospitality, walking, prayer, and reading aloud--bring our lives into focus and build community.

In this gripping exposé of our cyber-centric, attention-deficient life, journalist Maggie Jackson argues that we are eroding our capacity for deep attention and mindfulness. The implications for a healthy society are stark. In her sweeping quest to unravel the nature of attention and detail its losses, Jackson introduces us to scientists, cartographers, marketers, educators, wired teens, and even roboticists. She offers us a compelling wake-up call, an adventure story, and reasons for hope.

Includes relevant chapter: "Pay Attention"