This invite was interesting because part of the launch involved an experiment to track your time for one week, based on the concept that there are 168 hours in each week, and provided an Excel file to track your time in 30 minute increments for the week.

Intriguing. If someone asked you, could you accurately describe how you spend all 168 hours per week?

I’m three days into tracking my time. So far, I spend a lot of time answering email, reading news and tweeting.

Is Twitter is the black hole of time management and productivity? At work, I have a dual monitor set up with my laptop and keep one screen devoted to Tweetdeck. Part of this is necessary since I need to know breaking news in my job field and monitor various topics. However, anyone who actively tweets will tell you that a large percentage is just for fun. Sometimes, you can do the two at the same time, but it is still an overwhelming time management challenge.

By tracking my time, I’m also much more aware of how I spend it. When I click over to my second monitor, I’m keeping an eye on how long I interact. It was particularly evident this week, when I realized 45 minutes had gone by during a Twitter debate. Rather than stick with it, driven by the compulsion to have the last word, I broke it off and got back to work.

Experts debate on the effect that social networks have on productivity, but what is Twitter doing to our attention spans? Back in college (2000-2004), I could lock myself in the stacks of the library for five or six hours at a time, only getting up for bathroom breaks. Those were the last few years before smart phones and wifi, so I could study without distractions. Fast-forward two years to grad school (2006-2007), and I noticed a marked difference in my study habits. I had to take breaks every 30 minutes to check email or the news, and that was before anyone else was on Twitter.

Is it possible to have a long attention span anymore? Even when I turn off Tweetdeck or shut down gmail, which generally stays open in the background, I’m mentally checking to see if someone is chatting or I have a Tweetdeck message.

According to the New York Times, this constant connectivity has re-wired our brain.

“The technology is rewiring our brains,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse and one of the world’s leading brain scientists. She and other researchers compare the lure of digital stimulation less to that of drugs and alcohol than to food and sex, which are essential but counterproductive in excess.

The age of information addiction? My need to absorb news has actually created a neurological dependency for a steady stream of dopamine? According to the article:

Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.

These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored.

Doesn’t this sound like most bloggers?

“Throughout evolutionary history, a big surprise would get everyone’s brain thinking,” said Clifford Nass, a communications professor at Stanford. “But we’ve got a large and growing group of people who think the slightest hint that something interesting might be going on is like catnip. They can’t ignore it.”

Breaking news is my catnip, and I know I’m not alone.

However, this doesn’t seem to have killed my productivity. Looking over my tracker, I actually accomplished far more than I could have guessed. This is also normal according to the NYT:

Mr. Campbell can be unaware of his own habits. In a two-and-a-half hour stretch one recent morning, he switched rapidly between e-mail and several other programs, according to data from RescueTime, which monitored his computer use with his permission. But when asked later what he was doing in that period, Mr. Campbell said he had been on a long Skype call, and “may have pulled up an e-mail or two.

The trick is knowing when to shut everything down. The people profiled in the NYT piece struggle with it, and it’s hard.

Technology is changing us psychologically, mentally, socially and professionally. It may improve our productivity and help the bottom line, but it is actually changing humanity.

After realizing how ridiculous that reaction was and turning off the phone to conserve battery life (no one else had a charger that would work), I looked forward to this opportunity. I was in Indiana to celebrate the wedding of a dear friend and help her out, not share the minutiae of my existence with those who follow me on the global conversation known as Twitter.

I joked that I was suburban camping, and only went through withdrawals for a few hours. While I was busy helping with preparations, I soon noticed I wasn’t as jumpy or tense as I normally am. I didn’t feel the compulsion to read 800 newspapers or blogs a day to keep up with every breaking news story. I could focus on a task longer than 10 minutes. I was relaxed.

Now, I was hardly cut off. I checked email once a day, and sent out a couple of tweets on Saturday, but it was far from my usual time spent online. Honestly, I didn’t miss it.

Given my job and geographic location, I can’t maintain this level of disconnect, but I appreciated it. Outside of urban areas, I noticed that people don’t obsessively check their phones and BlackBerries for messages. Actually, not that many people had smart phones. At the rehearsal dinner, no one pulled out their phones for hours at a time. It was so noticeable that I commented on it, and a fellow guest, who lives in the New York area, agreed. People were focused on the conversation going on physically around them rather than activities back at the office or chatting with other friends.

Checking your phone constantly or texting while out with other people is a pet peeve of mine. I’m guilty of doing it, but it is rude to focus on some web device when out with friends for dinner or happy hour. It’s even worse if you’re on a date!

While situations arise when you do need to check your phone for something important, we blur the lines far too often. Following the latest trending topic on Twitter does not count as an emergency. If you are physically at an event with others, you should mentally be present as well.

Of course my period of disconnection didn’t stick. As soon as I got to the airport, I took advantage of free wifi. When I got home, I immediately spent a few hours catching up on the interwebs and penning this post.

I’m hardly turning into Wendell Berry, but I do think that humans need to disconnect regularly. Perhaps it’s just the news-obsessed culture of the DC area, but everyone around me would benefit from a tech break. Humans were not created to constantly absorb news and regurgitate information. Just because we can share information immediately, doesn’t mean we need to comply. The expectation to react 24/7 is not healthy, and it made the political world much worse.

I still love technology, partially because it pays the bills, but I do wish that it was easier to step away from it all.

After explaining that it is absolutely impossible to explain the plot line because nothing makes sense, it is generally best to give said person the first season on DVD and say, “See ya in a few days. You’ll be hooked.”

Now someone has come up with an eight minute recap of Lost seasons 1-5.

In case you don’t understand the addictive nature of this show, Lost prompted the one and only time that the Obama Administration has used common sense. Robert Gibbs announced that the State of the Union would not be on February 2, the date of the season 6 premiere. I know that I wasn’t the only person on Twitter freaking out when I heard that it was a possibility.

This does make me wonder what’s worse: living under an Obama Administration or living on a mysterious deadly island where nothing makes sense. Honestly, I really don’t know.

H/T Go Fug Yourself

It appears, he is also not as transparent with his digital media prowess as the administration claimed:

Well, first of all, let me say that I have never used Twitter. I noticed that young people — they’re very busy with all these electronics. My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone.

Is this a major deal? Kind of. When you run your campaign on the premise that you’re the most amazing thing to happen to the Internet since Al Gore, you open yourself to criticism in the future, especially when your campaign was lauded for being an early adopter of the technology in question.

Sarah Granger at TechPresident opines:

Meanwhile, I expect we’ll see more hoopla about Barack Obama not using Twitter, even though his campaign never asserted that he did himself. So far about half of the follow-up tweets on the #obamacn hashtag are RT’s about the admission and the other half is people responding that they never thought he was tweeting. Are 50% of Twitter users really that surprised?

Yep, actually Sarah we are surprised. For a number of reasons.

First, remember all of the media attention about Obama refusing to give up his BlackBerry and the NSA having to build a super-deluxe-ultimately-secure version of software? That kind of negates Obama’s comment about thumbs and makes you question if he fully understand exactly what Twitter is. If you are addicted to a BlackBerry, how do you not have the skills to tweet? Same device and skill set. It’s also possible to use Twitter on a computer. Tweetdeck anyone?

Secondly, as James Richardson at RedState recalls, the Obama team released an add attacking McCain for not using technology. While the McCain camp deserved to be flogged for their lack of enagaging the interwebs, John McCain actually tweets every day. As Top of the Ticket points out, he has nearly 1.6 million followers. RedState notes:

President Obama’s admission of his unfamiliarity of the internet tool de jour would have been an altogether innocuous acknowledgment that the President is, well, old, were it not for the dogged efforts of his campaign apparatus in portraying the young then-Senator Obama as hip and tech savvy opposite the old and inaccessible Senator John McCain.

Had the campaign not made such a big deal out of this, Obama’s statements would not be news. After all, I would prefer a president to do actual work (like decide on an Afghanistan policy) rather than tweeting the awesomeness of his lunch or deets from the last basketball game. In the end, it is ironic that John McCain is the more techno-saavy person here. I’m hardly surprised. This is just further proof of the dog-and-pony show that makes up the entire administration. How many times have there been claims that Obama had the talent and ability to handle something, and then we discovered otherwise?

This does touch on an emerging social media issue. How transparent should you be with tweets?

Some politicans take to Twitter. In addition to McCain, TweetCongress tracts what our Congressmen and Sentators are capturing in 140 characters or less. However, I’ve had numerous strategists and Hill staffers tell me that very few members actually tweet for themselves. In one case that surprised me, the scheduler sends out tweets for the member based on the schedule for the day.

Since most Congressional members use Twitter as a mini-press release vehicle, this isn’t a big deal. However, when tweets are about events in your home district, and your scheduler back in DC is sending them, that’s a transparency issue. As social media becomes more standard, I hope that elected and wannabe-electeds opt for more honesty. I find tweets from a staffer just as interesting as the candidate/member. It’s not a bad thing to attribute who’s tweeting. As someone who is addicted to Twitter and has tweeted professionally for a couple of jobs, be transparent. It’s appreciated.

After growing increasingly frustrated on Twitter yesterday, I decided to put up a post that gave some background and perspective on the Tea Parties. Aside from a supporter of the Tea Parties, I’m not an official organizer. However, I tracked both conservative insider information and media stories on the issue and wanted to address some of the issues that both Joe Lance at Tennessee Ticket and Dan Lehr at Public Interest brought up yesterday in their thoughtful posts.

Not a Sex Act
Many people were suddenly introduced to several new words this week: teabagging (which won’t be explained in this post. Google it yourself) and astroturfing in what I would call a blatant attempt by the media to misdirect the real meaning behind Tea Parties. Fiscal conservatives and frustrated taxpayers throughout the country have followed the progression of Tea Parties since Rick Santelli, online editor for CNBC, came up with the idea out of frustration earlier this year.

The first Tea Party was held in Chicago and erupted into a grassroots movement by fiscal conservatives and libertarians who were tired of not standing up for their values. The idea spread and on February 27, approximately 40 cities held tea parties with more than 30,000 people in attendance. Smart Girl Politics, the DontGo Movement and Top Conservatives on Twitter pushed the idea out to the thousands of conservatives who had flocked to Twitter in order to organize.

Interestingly, this coincided with CPAC, the annual gathering of conservative activities in Washington, D.C. The 2009 CPAC ended up being the largest one ever in its 30-plus year history. More than 10,000 conservatives converged on Washington happy to be free from the shackles of big-government, Bush Republicanism and anxious to reclaim the movement that Edmund Burke started more than three centuries ago.

The situation was perfect. Grassroots conservative leaders and conservative organizations saw the power of Tea Parties and recognized the frustration that many average Americans were facing with the bailout and stimulus acts. What was started as a pure grassroots movement was harnessed by the larger groups such as FreedomWorks, Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions, and every conservative leader who’s formed a PAC including Mike Huckabee (I’m on all their email lists and watched it unfold). When Sean Hannity, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh picked up on the idea and started spreading the news to the masses, I can understand how the left made the argument for astroturfing (fake grassroots. Get it?). For more information astrotufing vs. grassroots read Patrick Ruffini’s post at The Next Right.

But Conservatives Don’t Get the Web? Right?
To understand the origins of Tea Parties, readers must first get the state of the conservative movement. It’s been tough for conservatives over the past few years. While we had an “R” in the White House, President Bush rarely reflected any form of conservativism–limited government or fiscal conservatism. Stifled by a party holding a death grip on anyone who dissented with the President and angered by the left who hurled insults at anything hinting at conservative or Republican, we really couldn’t do anything but wait for the administration to end and possibly face an even worse McCain administration or the horrors of an Obama socialized government.

To make matters worse, Republicans had watched the left leapfrog over them in new media and organize through online tools. We knew that this was the future of the web, but top party leadership ignored us.

Some of us, aware of the power of the Internet, started organizing. Using the tools that Obama is now famous for, we flew under the radar and jumped on a new, little-known platform known as Twitter.

Everyone now knows about Twitter, but for the past two years, this has been one of the main ways that Conservatives organized. Conservatives individualistic pundits by nature compared to socialistic-leaning collectivism on the left. That’s why we write on our virtual soapboxes rather than comment and build a community like the left (DailyKos, Talking Points Memo). Twitter gave us the ability to express our own thoughts (in 140 characters or less) while creating a network of activists throughout the country. Talk radio has been credited with the rise of conservativism in the 90s. Twitter will likely account for the re-organization of conservatives in the future.

The DontGo Movement was the first step of the Tea Parties. Emerging in August 2008 when Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi refused to address the rising energy costs, several House members turned to social media to revolt. Tweeting from Blackberries in the dark on the House Floor (Pelosi ordered the lights off an CSPAN’s camera’s turned off), these Republican Congressmen kept communicating through Twitter, blogger conference calls and holding press conferences on Ustream. A few Twitterers took notice and using the hashtag to organize, created the #dontgo movement.

This developed into Top Conservatives on Twitter (#tcot) and Smart Girl Politics (#sgp), who all ended up leading the charge of the Tea Parties.

So Who Organized it?
It made me laugh yesterday to see the attempts to label the Tea Parties as astroturfing. These parties were so grassroots that in many cities people who have never been involved in politics organized them. I have never heard of the two people who organized the one in Chattanooga. Other active Republicans were clueless too.

In fact, the Tea Parties were so grassroots that Republican strategists complained that the movement seemed disjointed. Conference calls were chaotic because people who have never organized events were running these things. If the media only researched instead of reposting talking points or White House conference calls. Note that I wasn’t involved in the Tea Party development aside from a few tweets. However, I followed the progress and tracked insider reports as well as media stories. The frame expressed by most newspapers, CNN and networks couldn’t have been more different than how it happened.

In an era when George Soros funds “grassroots efforts” on the left to loud acclaim, I’m left wondering what on earth is grassroots anymore? Is it possible to organize a nationwide movement without money, staff time and resources? No. Does that mean that the minute and existing organization with those capabilities steps in it ceases to be grassroots? I don’t believe so. However, like so many things on the left, definitions change to suit their purposes.