Why Focusing Is So Much Harder Now
Daniel Goleman's book, Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, explores the power of attention. "Attention works much like a muscle," he writes, "use it poorly and it can wither; work it well and it grows."
To get the results we want in life, Goleman argues we need three kinds of focus.
How we deploy attention shapes what we see. Or as Yoda says, "Your focus is your reality."
Goleman argues that, despite the advantages of everything being only a click away, our attention span is suffering.
Here is a telling story. I was in a coffee shop just the other day and I noticed that when two people were having a conversation they couldn't go more than a few minutes without picking up their phone. Our inability to resist checking email, Facebook, and Twitter rather than focus on the here and now leads to a real life out-of-office. Sociologist Erving Goffman, calls this "away," which tells other people "I'm not interested" in you right now. Another example, from later in the day, comes from the post office. I was waiting patiently in line to pick up a parcel. Finally my turn came and the phone rang. The attendant, of course, ran to the phone making me feel less important than the mystery person on the phone.
We continually fight distractions. From televisions on during supper, text messages, emails, phone calls … you get the picture. This is one reason I've changed my media consumption habits in 2014.
It seems like we're going through life in, in the words of one All Things D(igital) conference in 2005, a "continuous partial attention." We're there but not really there. Unaware of where we place our attention.
I once worked with the CEO of a private organization. We often discussed board meetings, agendas, and areas of focus. I sensed a disconnect between what he wanted to happen and what was actually happening so I went back over the last year of board meetings and categorized each scheduled agenda item. It turned out that 'scheduled time' was almost the complete inverse of where he wanted to place attention.
Goleman also points to some of the implications of our modern world.
In 1977, foreseeing what was going to happen, the Nobel-winning economist Herbert Simon wrote:
William James, a pioneer of modern psychology, defined attention as "the sudden taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one of what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought."
We naturally focus when we're lost. Imagine for a second the last time you were driving in your car without your GPS and you got lost. Think back to the first thing you did in response. I bet you turned off the radio so you could increase your focus.
Goleman, paraphrasing research, argues there are two main varieties of distractions: sensory and emotional.
To focus we must tune out emotional distractions. But not at all costs. The power to disengage focus is also important.
We've all seen what a strong selective focus looks like. It's the couple in the coffee shop mentioned above, eyes locked, who fail to realize they are not alone.
It should come as no surprise that we learn best with focused attention.
Goleman goes on to discuss how we connect what we read to our mental models, which is the heart of learning.
If we can't focus we'll have more holes in our understanding. (To find holes in your understanding, try the Feynman Technique, which was actually an invention of George Eliot's but I'll save that for another day.)
The continuous onslaught of texts, meetings, videos, music, email, Twitter, Facebook, and more is the enemy of understanding. The key to understanding, argues Nicolas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, is "deep reading." And the internet is making this nearly impossible.
There is, however, perhaps no skill better than deep and focused thought. "The more information that's out there," says Tyler Cowen, author of Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation, "the greater the returns to just being willing to sit down and apply yourself. Information isn't what's scarce; it's the willingness to do something with it." Deep thought must be learned. In order to do that, however, we must tune out most of the distractions and focus.
Goleman reminds us that some of this too was foreseen.
The rest of Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence goes on to narrow in on "the elusive and under-appreciated mental faculty in the mind's operations" known as attention and its role in living "a fulfilling life."