Deep Focus and Distractability | What I've Learned
- Artful Balance
- Apr 12, 2019
- 2 min read
Updated: Apr 17, 2019
To be truly productive and successful professionally or creatively ... you need to set up long blocks of time where you can work completely uninterrupted, and you'll need to have developed a mind where distraction is not the default mode.
... The recent internet environment is one that wires people's brains for enhanced distractability.
Our brains are naturally on the alert for new information, and the more we're exposed to this virtual interface (the internet), the more our brain decides to rewire itself to respond to and even crave these internet distractions.
These quick or instant bursts of new or interesting information from the internet can become a slippery slope into a brain that enjoys and desires distraction and prefers instant gratification.
Being distracted like this gets in the way of the insightful, creative thinking necessary to complete fulfilling and ambitious tasks.
With enough time and uninterrupted focus, the information (that you gain from deep focus activities) slowly trickles from your conscious short-term memory to your subconscious long-term memory, and it's only when the information is in the long-term memory that you can make insightful connections with other pieces of information you've picked up in the past. The reason you can get those "A-ha" moments and creative insights out of the blue is because i the background, your subconscious memory is processing new and old bits of information and making connections between them.
"Attention is the key to the entire process of transferring information into long term memory and creating connections." -- Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows
When something distracts you and pulls your focus from the task at-hand, this transfer of information from short-term to long-term memory is interrupted.
Executive control is essentially the ability to stay rational, maintain focus, and exert will power in order to achieve some long term goal.
People who are truly addicted to the internet have reduced executive function.
Kind of like "you are what you eat," from your brain's perspective, you are what you use.
What I've Learned
Episode:
How the Internet Redesigns your Mind | Choose your Default Mode
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