Are our digital gadgets committing us to a life of unprecedented multi-tasking and busyness?  And if so, are we missing out on what’s perhaps the most important factor to a happy and fulfilling life: depth?

These are the questions author William Powers grapples with in his book “Hamlet’s Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age”.

As Powers asks, “so what?”   Life’s always been an exhausting grind.  We’re all living like this–racing and skimming our way through our days.

Well, maybe that’s the norm but much of it is self-induced—we’re pursuing busy-making activities and digital technology is helping us be more hectic.

And along the way, here’s what’s happening:  We’re becoming less productive at work (one study has found we spend more than a quarter of our day managing distractions). And we’re not thinking creatively (we don’t have the time and mental space to take a thought and follow it wherever it leads).

And by scrambling all the time, we’re scrambling our inner lives.  A tad philosophical perhaps? Yes, but worth thinking about. 

The author doesn’t rehash all the headlines and stories about multi-tasking – he wants to figure out how to change it.   

Oh and is other main point?  Lest we think the digital age has created an unprecedented situation of super-connectivity and distractedness, it hasn’t.  This conundrum is as old as civilization. As human connectedness advances (i.e. the advent of the printing press, the railroad, the telegraph), it’s always made life busier.  He examines a handful of iconic philosophers–Plato, Gutenberg, Thoreau, Ben Franklin, Shakespeare, Seneca—all of whom faced astonishing new inventions during their lifetimes.  And they all faced the same problem–striking a healthy balance between connected and disconnected.

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