Andy Ihnatko has a interesting article up on the Chicaco Sun-Times that should be read by every graduate student. In short, he summarizes a few of the key points made by Matt Richtel on a recent interview with NPR’s Fresh Air about how the brain doesn’t really multi-task and that whenever we try to do so we are cheating ourselves out of our potential. I haven’t listened to the Fresh Air interview yet, but I’ve been becoming more and more aware of how important it is to focus on things you care about, whether that is writing creative fiction, returning emails, putting together a lesson plan, or reading an article, etc. Now, we are, it appears, wired to lose focus pretty quickly. As Ihnatko put it (with his usual flair for style and humor):

Distraction is a feature of our OS, a bit of legacy code designed to keep us alive as cavemen. We were smart enough and creative enough to figure out how to turn a chunk of volcanic glass into an axe head, but we’d get killed if we got so wrapped up in the creative process that the sound of a hungry growl from the nearby bushes failed to instantly command our full attention.

So in a way, every time there’s something clamoring for our attention in our peripheral perception — be it a sound or something visual — some old part of our brain processes it as a downscaled version of a panther attack.Distraction is a feature of our OS, a bit of legacy code designed to keep us alive as cavemen. We were smart enough and creative enough to figure out how to turn a chunk of volcanic glass into an axe head, but we’d get killed if we got so wrapped up in the creative process that the sound of a hungry growl from the nearby bushes failed to instantly command our full attention.

So in a way, every time there’s something clamoring for our attention in our peripheral perception — be it a sound or something visual — some old part of our brain processes it as a downscaled version of a panther attack.

Ihnatko proceeds to cover some of his own attempts to change his relationship to distraction.

I suggest you read his entire article here and you can find the Fresh Air podcast here.

Of course, as graduate students, our attention is finite and our tasks seemingly infinite, so how do we try to minimize distractions and focus on the task at hand when our brain keeps worrying about the 12 other articles we need to read, the research that we should have done yesterday, the grading that needs to be done, the paper that needs to be researched, and the laundry, grocery shopping, apartment cleaning that somehow don’t magically happen by themselves?

Good question. Though I think minimizing distractions from Facebook and Twitter and email might be a good place to start. Also, I think the admonishment that Ihnatko takes from Richtel about letting yourself have some time to do nothing and to not fear boredom is very important. I know that often I’ll be in such a hurry to get through my reading for a class that I don’t take the time to reflect on an article after finishing it, or even just let my brain rest for a few minutes before going on to the next task. I’m definitely going to start being more aware of taking the time to let my brain take a break. Next week I’ll try not to check Twitter and Facebook and my RSS feeds on my phone while on the bus to school and instead just relax and soft focus on the world around me and let subconscious do its thing without my conscious mind being bombarded with information–much of it not even remotely important–constantly.