Paying Attention To Distraction

 "There's no shell script, there's no fancy pen, there's no notebook or nap or Firefox extension or hack that's gonna help you figure out why the fuck you're here. That's on you" - Merlin Mann

Ok Kelly, close your email tab. Good girl… Now just check to see if there are any comments on Facebook since you checked 3 seconds ago. Close that too. Nearly there!  Now just kill 9gag, Twitter, Reddit and that article about the origin of Nyan cat and then you’ll be all set. All gone? Well done. Now you can sit down and concentrate on writing your blog post about distraction. Ironic, isn’t it? 

I am going through a breakup. As you all know, they can be pretty tough. My usual way of dealing with this sort of thing is to immerse myself in cute but forgettable images of baby animals in various human disguises, or to post statuses with painfully transparent lyrics in an attempt to get my friends to understand the depths of my agony. Other times I would form new Facebook based friendships and immerse myself in them. These distractions allow me to avoid the obvious unpleasant realities.

The good news is that I am older and a little bit wiser (I would like to think) and I have enough brains to question whether my old methods served me well or whether I should try something new. The question on my mind is: are distractions always a bad thing? 

My uncle explained to me the theory of unfinished cycles. Humans have a finite amount of attention. When we abandon a process that has caught our attention and go onto the next, we have less attention to devote to a new task. Facebook, Twitter and everywhere else on the web that acts as platforms for interaction can make it impossible to complete certain cycles since you are always waiting for a reaction to something you have posted or a reply to a message. This makes it difficult to be present and fully aware.

With the rise of the internet, which brings with it plenty distraction and oceans of information, people have started to name the situation that we are facing as “The Poverty of Attention”. Years before the inventors of Google were even born, an economist by the name of Herbert A Simon succinctly described our current plight: “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it”. 

While this argument has merits, I believe that the internet – through the wealth of knowledge it provides – can also offer constructive pathways for focussed change. The internet does not necessarily only consume, it can also give.

 Last week I wrote a post on how social media can kill relationships. In the post I highlighted the importance of being mindful when using the internet to distract from introspection and working on yourself but, during a 3 hour hike, I realised that some form of distractions are not only healthy, but incredibly necessary.

Our primitive brains are always on the lookout for threats, both physical and emotional. Distraction can give you a break from these threats in order to come back to them once you have gathered enough strength to face them. The key is moderation and mindfulness.

Through Facebook I found a free fitness group that was going on a hike the very next day after my break up. I didn’t know anyone that was going but I realised that in order to keep swimming I needed to take my mind on a bit of a holiday and stock up on serotonin. Three hours, 50 gallons of sweat and a mini asthma attack later I was in higher spirits and ready to face reality and sit with my thoughts. Without Facebook, I would not have had this opportunity.

Edward de Bono has a great theory. He said that creativity requires breaking rigid thought patterns. He explained that when you think a certain thought more than once, a neural pathway is created and the more you think that thought (or a similar one) that particular pathway is thickened and strengthened, making it easy to surrender yourself to a certain way of thinking over and over again.

Now what I am trying to communicate here is that when you are going through changes in your life there is a forced breakdown of neural pathways that are nice and thick from daily use. Not automatically using those well-established pathways can be incredibly hard. For example, when I stopped smoking I had to surrender to the neural pathways linked to smoking breaking down. I then had to build new ones by thinking new thoughts until they become natural and the old pathways fell away. So basically, if you keep thinking and doing the same old things, you will never give yourself the opportunity to change. 

While I may be dealing with sadness right now, I am also revelling in the incredible feeling of my mind opening and in a strange way it is kind of beautiful. I can feel the neural pathways that were used to a certain way of living crumbling and collapsing on themselves. I am suddenly forced to be the town planner of my own head.  I can choose which thought patterns I want to get rid of and which I want to develop. It would be a tragedy if I chose to clog my mind up with too many distractions like Nyan cat and baby manatees. On the other hand, habits like hiking and meditation, accessed through the internet, are undoubtedly healthy.

Life changes shouldn’t be ignored by immersing yourself in distractions all the time. These are times to find your own definitions of things without the input of consensus reality (a la Facebook). However, shutting yourself off from the world’s wealth of knowledge and experience can also be detrimental since our jobs and social lives do depend on a degree of connectivity. Let the internet be a tool: use the creative energy that distractions spark to inspire focussed change. Allow yourself the opportunity to do the town planning in your own head.