‘‘The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is h | Golden Books™

‘‘The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention” – Kevin Kelly in ‘Wired’

In Computer Science, there is a condition called Memory Leak, where a Program, after using a chunk of Memory, doesn't properly free and return it to the Computer. The result will be pieces of memory scattered throughout the RAM inaccessible to the system and dominated by garbage Objects left by the ill-behaved program.

The human brain faces the same issue everyday.
When you have conscious or unconscious cognitive activity about something that you have stopped working on, and definitely are not supposed to think about now, you're experiencing memory leak. That something has taken a cognitive space in your limited attention that it had to return to you.

And there is a term for it, Attention Residue.
More formally Attention Residue, according to Sophie Leroy of University of Minnesota, is the persistence of cognitive activity about Task A even though one stopped working on Task A and currently performs a Task B.
Dr. Leroy conducted a research on a total of 162 individuals on two different studies to find out what factors affect the smooth transition while switching between tasks.
The proposed factors to have an impact on the process are:
- Task Completion
- Time Pressure

The study confirmed the proposition that, apart from finishing Task A before starting Task B, completing the task under high time pressure( limited time window) can play a role to reduce attention residue and attain cognitive closure (the end of cognitive processing obtained through psychological resolve after reaching an end point subjectively evaluated as satisfactory).
In addition, finishing a task, especially in high time pressure, improved the performance on the given task at hand, and resulted in elevated confidence. This confidence can then influence the performance on subsequent tasks.

What this possibly could indicate is, according to Dr. Leroy's own word, that unfinished, and or interrupted tasks are dangerous because they can easily turn to residue beyond our control. And the role of social media and cellphones is a prominent factor that doesn't even need to be explained in this sense. But attention, despite how we ignore its scarcity, is one of the treasures that can shape as much as the personal identity of a person, and by being so, requires a great deal of care.

Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residuewhen switching between work tasks
Sophie Leroy