How do you focus your attention? Do you switch from one task to the next to ‘get it all done’?
If we knew our brain’s limitations and strengths we might approach this differently.
The more attention the brain pays to a stimulus, the more elaborately the information will be encoded and retained. “Attention always equals better learning,” author of the book Brain Rules, molecular biologist John Medina says.
Medina’s lifelong interest in brain science provides transformative ideas for our daily lives, and one of these ideas is that our brain’s attentional capacity is not capable of multi-tasking.
One brain, one concept, one at a time.
We roar along the information freeway, changing lanes from emails, reading, report-writing, googling….
But our brain has inherent limitations for processing information – a crucial ingredient of knowledge-work, Medina points out. So while we’re on our ‘info freeway’ changing lanes, we’re really just planting the accelerator then jamming on the brakes, over and over.
The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a time. True, you can walk and talk at the same time, but we are biologically incapable of processing attention-rich inputs simultaneously.
A multi-screen activity – say shifting attention from writing a report to responding to an email – involves four attention shifts, Medina says.
The brain-rules for writing the report are different to the brain-rules for writing an email, so the brain must dis-engage from one task before it can engage with another. This switching of tasks takes four steps for the brain – engage, disengage, engage, disengage.
One-thing-at-a-time mindset.
Four steps must occur in sequence every time we switch from one task to another, and this is time consuming (as well as sequential) – that’s why multi-tasking drains the brain, Medina says.
So, this is what he suggests we do about this attention-deficit:
- Develop a ‘one thing at a time’ mindset because the brain is a sequential processor
- Create interruption-free zones, away from phone/email
- Make a habit of minimising distractions and doing one thing properly before moving on to the next
Articles of interest:
- “ We look at our phones roughly every six minutes, which means we are checking texts, emails, social media and, often nothing, 150 times a day.” ( The Tweeter’s retreat – taking a break from technology, the Australian, 28 August 2014)
- Some argue that the current generation of students grew up with digital devices and are much better at multitasking than their parents. But “when people say they’re ‘multitasking ‘, what they are really doing is something called “continuous partial attention,” where the brain switches back and forth quickly between tasks”, Goleman says. (Age of Distraction: Why it’s crucial for students to learn to focus )
4 Comments
Amone says:
January 27, 2017 at 12:03 am
Great article we need to stop the multi-tasking
Graham P says:
January 27, 2017 at 12:04 am
Interesting info thank you
Tutor group says:
February 27, 2017 at 12:37 am
4 steps, wow, this stuff is very helpful to the way we work with our students too
JD Thompson says:
February 27, 2017 at 12:39 am
I think devices definitely have a detrimental impact on our concentration but how can we do without them?