Characterizing your style for attending

1. List the kinds of media you use/read/engage with on a daily basis. Is your pattern for interacting with media the same or different than it was when you were 5? 10? 15? Give short descriptions.

2. Rank the relative amount of time you spend with each medium -- be as specific as you can.

3. Describe any media associated with how you perform the following school related tasks: 
do math or other calculation-based homework, read assignments, write a paper, study for an exam

4. Describe any media associated with how you do the following everyday tasks: 
drive, eat a meal by yourself, eat with your family/friends, household chores (cooking, cleaning, household repairs, work on your car)

5. Describe what you do to relax or in your free time - and how you relax 
(e.g. watching TV while looking at a magazine and texting a friend)

Analyzing patterns for attention: 
1. Patterns of attention for individual activities: look back over your list and rank the individual practices listed under 3 - 5 . Use a scale of 1 - 5 where 1 is deep attention (focused on one task - creating an environment with no distractions) and 5 is hyperattention (focused on multiple channels for input - creating an environment with many distracting features). These numbers reflect your preferences for attending for individual activities.

2. Patterns of attending within activity clusters: After you have ranked all the activities you listed, give yourself a score for school activities, living/household activities + relaxation activities by averaging the numbers in each category (for example if you have 3 for math assignments, 4 for reading assignments, 2 for writing papers, and 5 for studying for exams, then your school number would be: 3+4+2+5= 14/4 categories = 3.5

3. Overall pattern for attention. Average all the rating numbers to get your overall pattern for attending. 
 
Questions to think about. 
1. In which category were you most likely to use hyperattention? in which category were you most likely to use deep attention? Or do you seem to have a consistent style (all hyper or deep attention)? How would you explain this?

2. In which category was there the largest range of numbers ( for example, some activities rated 1, some rated 5). Can you explain why the range might be large for this category?

3. In which category did you have the most consistent style? Why do you think this is so? 
 
4. How would you characterize yourself in terms of patterns for attending? Do these numbers reflect how you would characterize yourself (in terms of attention)? What correlations or inconsistencies do you see between your feeling about how you think and these numbers? Can you explain them?