Apparently our attention span has gone down to… 8 seconds. If whatever we are looking at, has not engaged us quickly, we are off to the next thing sooner than ever. And that is when we actually zoomed into the headline and clicked on it. The amount of information pushed on us is enormous and everyone tries to make a statement that will make us think: we can’t miss that. Oh, and the amount of crap is UNBELIEVABLE!!! It just sits there between important political news, scientific discoveries and sport. No matter how renown and respected the website, rubbish fills half of the space if not more.

Why?

Because we read it. We click on ‘Beyoncé’s boob fell out of the dress’. We have created the Kardashians! Life is hard work, so sometimes to rest we go online to read the news (or that is what we tell ourselves). But in the end we want a ‘mental break’. We scan the headlines and end up in the gossip section. You might say, there is nothing wrong with it – I used to think the same. But there is. We live in such a rush nowadays that we have very little spare time. If you spend your 15 min ‘mental break’ on crap, you just give it away. You have just paid the mass media tax. Gone and forgotten, you will not see it ever again.

Let’s not be sheep herded by the media in whatever direction they want us to go. It is hard and I still stumble every day but I made a conscious decision to claim my time back. And what do I do with it? I give it back to you…

There is some amazing science going on behind the doors of R&D labs and offices. Science that is going to change lives. My life, your life, the lives of our kids and parents. At the same time every day we are faced with some sort of small decisions: give paracetamol or not, ask for an antibiotic or wait, pop that multivitamin or skip it. We think we understand why and everyone does it, so maybe I should follow?

I say no.

There will be days when we will have to make heartbreaking decisions about serious drug treatments, therapy choices and lifestyle changes. On those days we will be probably petrified and overwhelmed. Will that be the right time to try to understand the current situation?

I say no.

I say that we are responsible for our own lives and choices we make. We are strongly influenced by the thought leaders and authorities, but it does not release us from thinking. In the end certain decisions are made by us and we are the ones paying full consequences.

Maybe it is time to try to understand the world that is developing around us. Find the facts and make up our own mind, have a personal opinion and feel confident about it.

And this is why I give you my free time I do not have 🙂 I have created this blog out of passion and I pay it with my sleep time. My return on investment is your feedback, the stats that you read it and joy of investigating an intriguing topic. That is why I hope that next time you will spend your 4min of ‘mental break’ reading my article. I hope you will enjoy it and take from it something just for you. And then you will take the other 11 minutes and find another author who will make the read worth your while.

Remember? 8 seconds…

1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi, 4 Mississippi, 5 Mississippi, 6 Mississippi, 7 Mississippi, 8 Mississippi … and we are gone.