Your ETR (Estimated Time to Read): 12 minutes
Your ETII (Estimated Time to Implement Ideas): 5 weeks

September 2010

In this Issue: Down load a FREE song by Dan Bern. Click HERE to learn more.

Say It Quick a thoughtful message in exactly 99 words	Discoveries bits of serendipity to inspire and motivate	Ideas fuel for your own continuous learning	Activities tips and tricks you can try today
Focus of Attention	RAPT: Attention and the Focused Life	Technology and Attentiveness	What is Your Focus Now?

Say It Quick

Focus of Attention
With neon signs that take up the side of a whole building, vendors and musicians on every corner, traffic racing through the streets, and faces from seven continents, a stroll through Times Square was a night of entertainment all by itself. But trying to find the restaurant where my friend was waiting, I walked right past it - twice!

I realized it's actually easier to ignore the frantic details up close and focus on what's happening across the street instead.

With the distant view as a temptation, we easily overlook the people and opportunities closest to us.

 

Discoveries

RAPT: Attention and the Focused Life
by Winifred Gallagher, Penguin Books, 2010, ISBN 978-0-14-311690-5

With its black cover and bold yellow print, Winifred Gallagher's book, Rapt, caught my eye immediately. But what drew me to pick it up and eventually read it was the subtitle and the promise of an increase in clarity and purpose. Did I achieve that? Well, not yet, in all honesty, but Gallagher's book offers ideas about why I haven't and how I might in the future.

Rapt is an exploration of our attention, what attracts it, what holds it, and how to use it to be more purposeful. Gallagher approaches attention from two directions. She writes about the role of "bottom up" attention for survival and its purpose to alert us to danger and opportunity in our immediate environment. Bottom up attention relies upon novelty to pull our focus in a particular direction. It helps us identify and prioritize what's important in the moment from staying safe to finding a mate or keeping a job.

Gallagher also spends time explaining the way in which our "top down" attention can help sustain energy and, in so doing, shape the way we experience our circumstances. This top down control of attention is what determines the quality of our lives. Choosing to focus attention on a person's positive intentions rather than the last time they offended you, for example, has a strong impact on how you are likely to view them in the future. Additionally, it's also likely to color your experience with the next person you run into.

One of the interesting features of attentionis the variety of ways it plays out in our lives - mostly below our awareness. With chapters on relationships, productivity, decision-making, creativity, motivation, health, and meaning, the book offers explanation and insight. Some examples:

• "No matter what problem might arise in a relationship, the first step toward solving it generally involves redirecting your attention - usually outward to the other person." (p.97)
• "The way in which a couple attends to the good things that happen in both of their lives actually correlates more closely with their well-being than the way they deal with the tough stuff." (p.90)
• Some of our attention is culturally learned. Samoan children are taught to focus outward to other people. They become adept at reading emotions. The dominant culture in the US is individualistic and teaches the young to focus more on objects. Even babies have toys. (p.86)
• Attention is necessary to create a sense of flow in work. By focusing closely on each aspect of a task and trying to figure out how to make it better, what might be a chore becomes a game. (p.107)
• When preparing to face a stressful situation like a public speech, decide beforehand what you will focus on when you are actually in the situation. (p.183)

Using the qualities of attention, a characteristic we usually take for granted, Rapt offers a helpful window to the workings of our mind.

 

Ideas

Jane By Dan Bern So many things to think about And if I really tried Einstein's theory of relativity Could keep me occupied But no matter what I do To keep great thoughts in my head Four little letters makin' up one word Keep spinning 'round instead Jane Jane Jane Your name reverberates through my brain Jane Jane Jane I bought a dictionary All it did was get in the way Too much A B C D E F G H I And not enough J I wake up in the morning With your name on my lips I'm thinking of learning how to read Braille To have you at my fingertips Jane Jane Jane… Conversation isn't easy With such a one-track mind If I thought about science Like I think about you I'd win a Nobel Prize I went to see a therapist The result was just the same We played word-association And all I said was Jane Yeah there's much too much to think about Enough to make you go insane You can all think about everything else I'll think about Jane Jane Jane Jane… Download an MP3 of this song. Learn more about singer/songwriter/artist, Dan Bern. (Jane music and lyrics © Dan Bern and used by permission)

Technology and Attentiveness
During the past few months, the concept of attention has gained a lot of traction in light of the rocketing popularity of social media and its ability to insert itself into our lives at any moment.

• Nicholas Carr has written a book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brain, which raises the question of whether all the constant interruptions to our thinking from tweets, cell phones, instant messages, and email notices might be preventing us from thinking critically and creatively.
• Scientists cited in Gallagher's Rapt offer evidence that multitasking is a myth. We don't really learn to do two or three things at once; we divide our attention into short snippets and distribute them among tasks. Every break requires a cranial re-start creating inefficiency and interjecting mistakes.
• "Learning Curve Goes Digital" in the August 10 issue of USA Today points out that, though college text books are available digitally, students prefer not to use their computers to study because of the distractions they constantly present.
• "Is Tech Rewiring Our Thinking?" from the Christian Science Monitor, July 26, 2010, questions whether "… technology [is] making us dumb and distracted or turning us in to expert information finders and magnificent multitaskers."

As the 99-Word Story illustrates, it's not just high tech gadgets that cause us to lose control of our attention. Too much focus on one thing becomes an obsession. Dan Bern's song Jane (see sidebar) is a humorous example of what can happen when our attention circuits fixate on a single topic.

On the other hand, the inability to filter out unwanted stimuli can be just as debilitating. The 2009 film Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Ritchie and staring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes, features a character who is unable to ignore sensory input. While this gives Holmes the ability to notice details and extract clues from them for his investigation, it also becomes a source of overwhelming stimulation that drives Holmes to binge drinking and drugged blackouts lasting days at a stretch. Watch the film with special attention to a short scene in which Holmes, while waiting for Watson and his fiancé, is nearly overburdened by the stimuli in what most would describe as a stately, polite restaurant setting.

For me, the question becomes one of being intentional about how and to whom we focus our attention. What role do we assign for technology in our attentiveness? Do we focus on the tweets and IMs we are receiving or to the person in the room with us now; the glitz and dazzle of Times Square or the important information under our nose?

Then, once we are aware of our present focus, what are we thinking about? Will our thoughts enable us to make a difference in the moment or will they perpetuate a cycle of distracted worry, fear, or stress? Being attentive can help us choose.

(The word cloud above is based on the lyrics to Jane by Dan Bern. Click the image to hear the song. The word cloud was created at http://www.wordle.net/ See additional word clouds based on the same lyrics HERE.)

 

Activities

What is Your Focus Now?
To gain more awareness about your own level of attention and your ability to filter out what's unnecessary or to create a flow state of focus, you might try this experiment.

Place your watch on your opposite wrist. Wear it that way for several days or a week. Now, every time you check your watch you'll be reminded to check your attention too. Whether you want to know the time or you simply notice the naked feeling on your other, empty wrist, you can make a mental note of what has been occupying your thoughts.

Each time you are reminded to pay attention to your own level of attention, here are some things you might do:

• Ask, "What am I thinking and feeling right now? Are these thoughts and feelings making a positive contribution for me and those around me?"
• Identify one positive or pleasurable thing you are experiencing right now: a glimpse of blue sky, the smell of coffee, a satisfying conversation.
• Has it been a long time since you noticed your focus of attention? Perhaps you've been in a state of flow! What have you been doing and how can you do it more often?
• Do you find yourself "stock piling" a list of pleasurable experiences for the next time you look at your watch? Good! Perhaps you are becoming more adept at living your life in the moment.

When practicing this activity, you are tapping into Gallagher's notion that our bottom up attention (looking at your watch) can continually refocus your higher-function top down attention.

Some mystics tell us we create our own reality. Whether that's true or not, we do at least create our own experience of it. If you try this experiment, please what you create!

"It's hard to keep the world's attention for more than half an hour, and I've managed to do it for more than half a century. But in a world that is becoming more and more surreal, it is going to be more and more difficult to shock."
-- Salvador Dali

 

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Additional word clouds made at Wordle using the lyrics from Jane. If you make a word cloud from something you've written, please !

 

 

 

 

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