–-Laura Oles

A few years ago, Microsoft released a study that claimed the average American had the attention span of a goldfish.  

Eight seconds. 

I can relate.

While this study has been hotly debated–some sources claim we are simply becoming more adept at filtering out unimportant content designed to grab out attention–I remain undecided. Some days I’m Dory from Finding Nemo. “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…ooh, what’s that? A new project?”

And I’m off on a tangent.

This has become particularly more challenging now that summer is here and our kids have no fixed daily schedule.  I love this part of parenthood–my kids are older now and time is fleeting–but I also realize that I have to carve out a set schedule even though others are coming in and out all day.  Working from home is a wonderful gift but also brings its own challenges.

And don’t get me started on the time suck that is social media. I know some truly productive people who are on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter all the time, and I marvel at how they manage it all.

I’m not one of those people.  

So, as someone who was in search of solutions, I was thrilled to come across Cal Newport’s latest book titled Digital Minimalism.  I had read his previous book, Deep Work, and found some very compelling arguments for ignoring most things that demand our attention in order to accomplish our top priorities.  Cal Newport is an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University, but he isn’t on social media.  He’s a prolific author and an example of what one can accomplish when treating our attention and time as our most valuable resources.  One of Newport’s most powerful contentions is that so few people possess the ability to focus on a single task for long periods of time that this skill will soon become a huge competitive advantage. 

I decided to experiment with some of the lessons I learned to see which ones, if any, might help improve my focus and reclaim some lost time.  Here are a few that are working for me:

No Morning Social Media:  With the exception of my publisher’s FB group and a writers’ sprint thread, I try not to be on social media unless there is a specific reason (book promotions, etc).  Working from home can be fraught with distractions, but I feel this is one thing I can control.  This rule helps me turn my attention to my daily priorities sooner instead of squandering minutes and energy on social media procrastination.  

Scheduled Email:  Having my email accessible on my phone has been a mixed blessing.  I can quickly respond to requests and inquiries, but then again, like social media, before long I’m down a rabbit hole of other people’s priorities. I now check in three times a day–early morning, lunch, and end of day–and this seems to work well.  If there’s an urgent concern, that’s usually when I get a phone call. People know how to reach me if needed. 

Do Not Disturb is Your Friend:  Did you know that studies show that we check our phones several times per hour even when we aren’t receiving notifications?  And when our phones are blowing up with non-critical messages and demands for our attention, it takes us 20 minutes to refocus completely on the task at hand? There are so many ways for technology to intrude that it has required me to rethink my constant accessibility.  I now put my phone on Do Not Disturb for certain hours in the day when I know I will need uninterrupted time.  That doesn’t mean my time remains completely uninterrupted, but at least I’ve narrowed down the ways in which my time gets fractured into smaller segments.

I realized that I sometimes allow technology to determine which priorities receive my attention rather than using technology first and foremost for my own benefit in pursuit of my goals.  Pushing my correspondence and social media to the late afternoons/evenings has helped open my creativity and allowed the space my mind needs to work out plot issues and character motivations.  By not filling in small bits of time with other distractions, I’m returning to those earlier days when our minds were allowed to wander and ponder.  

I still fall off track now and then–usually, when I’m struggling with a particular aspect of a writing project–but I now catch myself more quickly and return to the task at hand.  Being more mindful of my attention has also helped me better identify why I’m procrastinating in a certain situation.  Once I can name it, I can figure out how to fix it.  I still fall short sometimes, and that’s okay.  Small improvements can mean big results over the long term. Not perfect, but better.  

I’ll take better. 

–By Laura Oles

Alice Almendarez has lived a nightmare few can fathom.  

Imagine celebrating a holiday with a loved one, enjoying the simple pleasure of a family gathering, the demands of daily life slowing down for this brief moment.

Now imagine that your loved one disappears without a trace.  

This is the pain Alice endured when her father disappeared after spending Father’s Day with her family in June of 2002.  One moment he was with them, and then he was gone.  

Alice went to the Houston police to file a missing persons report.  She followed the instructions of what she was told to do, but adult missing persons cases can be challenging in many ways.  Law enforcement officers explained that her father was an adult and that it wasn’t a crime to go missing.  In her heart, she knew her father would never walk out on his family in such a way, but small doubts haunted her.  What if he had left them? It is a horrible burden to carry as a child.

Alice searched for twelve long years before she would learn the fate of her father.  

 She later discovered that his body had been found a few weeks after his disappearance, floating in the Buffalo Bayou in Houston, just a few minutes from his childhood home.  Early on, she had gone to the morgue asking if they had any bodies matching her dad’s description and was turned away, only to later find out he had been there during the time she was looking for him.  The truth had been close and she had no idea. 

The one consistent support Alice’s family received was from NamUs, whose mission is to “bring people, information, forensic science and technology together to resolve missing, unidentified and unclaimed persons cases throughout the United States.” Alice reached out to NamUs and was able to identify her father’s remains through their database.  NamUs works with coroners, medical examiners, law enforcement and families to create comprehensive case files that can help identify remains previously unidentified.  It can provide answers to families who have waited years without word of what happened to their loved ones.

One of the most surprising things to learn is that many law enforcement offices and counties don’t use NamUs.  Many don’t even know it exists.  NamUs was established in 2007 with the help of the Department of Justice and has grown into a comprehensive resource available at no charge for law enforcement agencies.  

There is currently no national law, or law in Texas, that requires any type of law enforcement or coroners offices to report unidentified remains to any database.

This is a huge challenge for families of the missing because there are often important pieces of information that would lead to the discovery of a missing person if only they had been submitted to a central database.  Many families have lived the same horrific process once a family member disappears.  A missing persons report is filed with the police in the city that they live in but if the body of that person is found in another county, there is no guarantee that this information will be shared or communicated.  So many connections are never made, leaving the remains of family members unidentified for years or decades.  

If a person goes missing in Dallas and his body is found in San Antonio, the NamUs requirement would help make this connection.  If one agency enters the unidentified body into the database but the missing persons report isn’t also entered, the chances of identifying them are greatly reduced.  All sides must work together and be connected.

This past Saturday, Alice stood before a crowd at the Missing in North Texas Event at the NamUs headquarters at the University of North Texas and announced her intent to pursue legislation in Texas requiring all law enforcement to enter all missing persons cases into NamUs after 30 days if remains have not been identified. Similar legislation has already passed in Arkansas, Illinois, New Mexico, New York, Tennessee and Oklahoma. 

Using NamUs would not only benefit the families of unidentified missing–it would also benefit law enforcement on several levels.  More cases could be closed and counties would no longer spend excess money on burials because remains went unidentified.  A potter’s field is no place for someone’s father, someone’s child, someone’s sister–not when there are resources available to help them return those remains to loved ones. No one should have to wait decades for answers because a valuable resource like NamUs isn’t being used. This law would help change that.

Todd Matthews, Director Case Management & Communications at NamUs, told me, “I’ve seen Alice resurrect herself from total devastation into a powerful advocate for change. As a father myself – I am positive that her father would be more proud that she can even imagine. His passing and her resilience was a catalyst for change.”

Alice has been kind enough to share her story with me in the hopes of bringing awareness to the plight many families of missing people are experiencing as they go through each day without answers.  She knows this pain personally and deeply and still carries it today.  

 “I know the guilt of feeling a moment of happiness, for celebrating a birthday, for celebrating anything when our loved one is no longer here,” Alice said.  “My commitment now is to help families who have experienced what I have endured and hopefully pass a state law that will give more families answers.”