Is distraction at work changing our brains?
‘We cede control over our attention at our own peril. Everything that neuroscientists have discovered about the cellular and molecular workings of the brain underscores that point.’
Nicholas Carr ‘The Shallows’.
Are you finding it more and more difficult to focus? Do you have far too much work and not enough time to fit it in? Are you permanently exhausted yet never seem to finish anything properly? Recently, most of my conversations with leaders and H.R. specialists have focused around the growing problem of distraction. It is certainly affecting productivity and according the Nicholas Carr and many others it could be rewiring our brains. This is good and bad news; as always we need to retain the good and manage the bad. The good news is a growing ability to skip lightly over multiple information sources quickly. The bad is a tendency to distraction (some are calling this A.D.D. at work) and an inability to think deeply as a result.
Years ago, when I taught rapid reading, I found it difficult to persuade people to skim rapidly across the page in order to quickly ‘get the gist’ of a piece of writing. They wanted to ‘read it properly’. Today, there is no such problem, the ability to skim has been greatly developed, it is almost an art. Unfortunately, reading ‘properly’ has now been discarded as too time consuming. I believe that it cannot be either one or the other; we need to be good at both to achieve our best work. Let’s get some balance.
There has been a recent explosion of interest in the new ‘epidemic of inattention’ facilitated by the internet. The impact of this phenomenon on our thinking has been strongly flagged by brain experts. In some cases these warnings seem to flag the end of the world as we know it. However, I am not so pessimistic! Personally, I think that the internet has opened up the most exciting opportunities for learning and developing shared wisdom. However, I think that we need to develop new skills to balance and integrate technical tools and the human mind.
For those of you who haven’t seen these – here are a few articles:
Books with research on distraction:
‘Your Brain at Work’ David Rock
‘Your Brain at Work’ David Rock
‘Brain Rules’ John Medina
What are the risks of continuing to work as we do?
If we continue without developing thinking balance, we could find ourselves in a work world of distracted thought where we are:
- Under optimising the potential of technology+ humanity
- ‘Outsourcing’ our thinking and our memories
- Overwhelmed with information but short of meaningful knowledge
- Addicted to ‘fast and impatient’ habits (A.D.D. @ work)
- Losing our natural creativity
- Relating with people more on line than in person
- Having no time for quiet reflection and deep thinking
- Rewiring our brains in line with new broad but ‘shallow’ thinking
What are the causes of our distraction?
Search engines
‘We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom’ Edward O Wilson
Search engines such as Google now provide a virtually limitless source of information. It feels good to be able to search and find so much relevant data and it is hard to draw the line; how much is enough? We spend most our time discovering masses of information to the detriment of thinking about it’s meaning (knowledge) and best application in context (wisdom). We should use this amazing invention to optimise our benefits by managing it as a tool.
Hyperlinks
Hyperlinks within the texts encourage us to disrupt our thinking focus by visiting a related topic area as we read. This disrupts thought patterns making understanding and connecting new information to existing knowledge more difficult. Did you just click into the hyperlinks I posted above? Isn’t it fantastic? How did that affect your understanding of this post? Using hyper-links consciously can help achieve the best of both worlds – instant referral and better understanding. Using them unconsciously leads to interrupted thinking patterns and ‘scattered’ thinking.
Exciting hand held devices
New hand held devices have added to hardware that enables us to communicate 24/7. Email is such an instant medium that everyone is suddenly able to contact us about anything. Some of my colleagues are getting over 200 emails a day. Reading
Belief in Multi tasking
Most of us believe that multi tasking is possible; this is despite the fact that research shows the brain cannot multi task things that are important or new. At best our brains can do a few things at once when they are firmly built into our habitual routines – however, if routine suddenly shifts results can be deadly. For example, we may be driving to a well known destination and texting may be routine but driving and texting is known to make us 23 times more likely to have an accident. This is because the circumstances of the trip change each time we drive that route and our visual sense is unable to process two different tasks simultaneously.
Manic Multitasking (persistently attempting to do more than one thing at a time) is a serious condition. Long term practice makes it harder and harder to focus and do anything properly. Creativity is a casualty; it fails as our time becomes saturated with information and inattention destroys any hope of connecting to existing knowledge and ideas. The brain cannot always be ‘on’ – it needs breaks to function well.
Wisdom is based on connected knowledge and its common sense application in context; this is unlikely to develop without time to think. Do not multi task and don’t beat yourself up about it; even we women don’t really multi task effectively.
Addiction to ‘Busy-ness’
No wonder most of us become addicted to new technology – spending up to 8 hours a day in front of a screen (computer, TV or mobile).We undoubtedly get short term ‘feel good’ chemicals released in to our brains: we are constantly connected (a social buzz for most of us) and we can search and find anything in a moment (an ancient ‘hunter-gatherer’ achievement buzz). We feel that we are working hard and long hours – and we are. It may just be that we are spending a great deal of time on non priority issues. In the wake of this addiction, our interpersonal relationships can suffer when there is little time to relax and talk face to face. This growing addiction should be acknowledged and managed with discipline.
Thought interruptions
An interruption is anything that breaks our concentration on a single task. Most offices have open plan arrangements that can kill concentration. This matters because interruptions can prevent development of long term memories. Without concentration, we are also unable to connect new knowledge to existing memories. Both open plan offices and technology (emails and hyper-links in text) contribute to our interrupted thoughts.
What to do?
Become more aware of your thoughts and use processes to:
- Manage the external environment
- Develop new personal habits
Try the quiz in the next post to see if you are suffering from distraction.
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