How often do you feel distracted? Better yet, how often do you feel like the day has flown by and somehow you’ve lost time?
If you’re like me (and most Americans), it happens pretty often. We’ve all pretty much entered the attention Thunderdome. There’s an ad for something plastered on every surface. We have tailored ads literally following us around online. And you’re most likely carrying a smartphone with you right now, a device designed to leverage your attention in bits and pieces.
A recent Deloitte study found that the average American now checks their phone 47 times a day, and it’s not a trend isolated to the young. Nearly 70% of Americans over 55 have smartphones, and a vast majority will use them daily.
Those smartphones are windows to the world, but we overwhelmingly use them to engage in pleasure-seeking behavior (probably to no one’s surprise).
Look at all of that social media time. Research has shown that social media is basically a dopamine factory. Every new story, every like, every share gives your brain a tiny bump of pleasure. Over time, you can become addicted to that pleasure.
Cal Newport, author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, explains that push mobile notifications, social media highs and easy distraction can actually train our brains to expect regular interruption. Then when you sit down with the need the focus, it’s a struggle to keep your brain on task.
So how can you better control your attention and put your brain to work on deeper thoughts?
Reduce Distractions
This probably seems obvious after the intro we just went through, but the first step to keeping your brain on task is seeking situations where you’re less likely to have constant demands for your attention.
According to the Deloitte study, only about 30% of us have been able to successfully curb our smartphone usage. The top tactics are keeping phones out of site (in pockets or handbags) and turning off the alerts.
But smartphones aren’t the only distractions we face. If you work in an open office plan, you’re probably bombarded with sounds that can make it hard to focus. At home, you might be surrounded by people or leisure activities, all subtly tugging at your attention.
It’s rare that we carve out a time and place to be focused. To sit quietly alone and put our full selves into a single thing. I use A Soft Murmur for white noise at work and schedule time for silence. Whatever your strategy, you’ll need to carve out the distractions to regain your focus.
Practice
In Why Buddhism is True, Robert Wright uses the module model of the mind to talk about focus and attention. In essence, your mind is a mish-mash of different programs trying to keep you alive. Some are focused on seeking food, others reproduction. Some are concerned with social standing or besting rivals. All day long, those modules shout out demands for the things they care about.
We like to think of our conscious mind as a kind of Ringleader for that thought circus, cracking the whip to bring the actors into line. But for anyone whose mind has every wandered or has flashed back to an embarrassing moment in the third grade, you know that isn’t really true. Our thoughts are powerful actors, and we usually don’t have direct control of them.
The reason we lack control is a lack of practice. Our Ringleader is used to being ignored so he doesn’t know how to control the circus. But there is a solution. Mindfulness, one of the more thoroughly researched meditation practices, has been shown to give individuals better control over thoughts and emotional responses, simply by practicing attentional control. By practicing focus, you can empower your brain’s Ringleader to better control distractions.
There are a million ways to get started with a mindfulness practice, but the simplest is to practice paying attention. Sit in a quiet place and feel the air against your skin. Feel your weight on the chair. Count your breaths. Purposefully pay attention in that moment and notice everything you can. Don’t worry about the future or past, just notice the now. When your mind wanders, bring it back.
It sounds so easy, but for many of us, it’ll feel like pulling teeth the first few times. The desire to pick up the smartphone or worry about an upcoming meeting can feel almost painful. It’s only through regular practice that we can grow our attention muscle and regain our focus.
Seek Boredom
I know boredom sounds like something to be avoided. Most of us are surrounded with tools to prevent boredom — phones, TVs, and computers. But the drive to always be distracted or always be with others is proving to be too much of a good thing.
Solitude and boredom allow our brain to think in different ways. They let you slow down long enough to review recent decisions, think more creatively about current problems and generally clear your head.
When we’re distracted or around people, we’re making thousands of split-second decisions. What do you say? How do you act? How do I clear this level of Candy Crush? It’s a constant stream of choices based on input from the environment around you. But too much of that and the ability to think deeply can atrophy. We lose the ability to examine ourselves and the world purposefully. We can lose the ability to focus. Blaise Pascal famously said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
If you’re like me and like to move, walking is a good option, too. From Beethoven and Darwin to some of today’s Silicon Valley heavyweights, long walks are a common practice of deep thinkers. But doing it alone and with time to think is necessary.
Make a habit of putting yourself in situations to be bored. Don’t make plans for distraction. Don’t cut the time short. Give yourself time to be alone with your own thoughts and see what happens.
Taking Back Our Brains
If you look back even a hundred years, the worlds of education and intellectual life were very different. Kids memorized long, complex stories and poems in school. Public intellectuals would travel the country reciting memorized speeches about issues of the day, and locals would sit for hours and listen.
Can you imagine that happening today? Most of us can’t get through a television show without checking our phones, and I can hardly remember the last thing I memorized. No doubt technology has made a lot of new things possible, but we’ve lost something along the way.
Purposefully taking control of our attention can help make us more creative, calmer and better at time management. We just have to make a decision about the value of our times and attention.