Episode 14

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Published on:

26th Jan 2023

Gloria Mark - Replay

Gloria Mark is a Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Informatics at the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at University of California Irvine. This is a replay of our conversation in 2017 in honour of her having just published her book called ‘Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity’ which is being touted as the ‘must-read book for January’ and receiving a lot of enthusiastic media and podcast attention.

In this conversation from 2017, you’ll hear Gloria talk about her experiences as chair of a major conference, how she moved from a Fine Arts background, painting murals on buildings, to a PhD in cognitive science and to studying the relationship between media use, attention and stress. I’m re-playing this as I think it will be interesting to see how this work put her on the path to her current book and inspire people to similarly think about how they can amplify the impact of their academic outputs.

Full transcript to download

Overview:

0:05 Introduction to this episode.

5:31 How Gloria has grown in(to) the role of conference chair.

12:33 How the alternative of painting in a studio (when murals would be no option any more) was not a good fit.

13:41 From Arts to Biostatistics to Psychology: about being open-minded and taking risks.

26:03 About the patterns that can be seen in studying us multitaskers.

31:53 How digital media intensifies our multitasking and shifts attention.

36:08 Rewards and gratifications that people get with email, and how this makes breaking bad habits hard.

39:25 The importance of having a macro-level strategy.

43:11 How Gloria looks after herself and tries to alleviate stress.

53:29 End

Related links

Gloria Mark - home page

Book: Gloria Mark, 2023,  “Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity



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About the Podcast

Changing Academic Life
What can we do, individually and collectively, to change academic life to be more sustainable, collaborative and effective? This podcast series offers long-form conversations with academics and thought leaders who share stories and insights, as well as bite-size musings on specific topics drawing on literature and personal experience.
For more information go to https://changingacademiclife.com
Also see https://geraldinefitzpatrick.com to leave a comment.

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Geraldine Fitzpatrick

Geraldine Fitzpatrick (Geri Fitz), is an awarded Emeritus Professor TU Wien, with degrees in Informatics and in Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology, after a prior career as a nurse/midwife. She has International experience working in academic, research, industry and clinical settings. She is a sought-after facilitator/speaker/coach who cares about creating environments in which people can thrive, enabling individual growth, and creating collegial collaborative cultures. Apart from her usual academic work, she is an international keynote speaker, and a facilitator/trainer of seminars, workshops and courses for academics and professionals at all levels, from senior academic leaders, to mid and early career researchers, to PhD students. She is also a mentor/coach for academics and has been/is on various Faculty evaluation panels and various International Advisory Boards. An example of a course is the Academic Leadership Development Course for Informatics Europe, run in conjunction with Austen Rainer, Queens Uni Belfast. She also offers bespoke courses.