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The Space-Mind Continuum

April 6, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

distraction

We all have a limited amount of System 2 (conscious) attention to dispose of each day, and when we’ve exhausted it we can’t quickly or easily replenish it.

Every waking moment, you are making judgments about where to focus your attention. If you didn’t, you would be overwhelmed by the vast amount of sensory information in your surroundings. The ability to direct attention, a skill humans share with species as primitive as fruit flies, helps you process what is important to you at the moment and ignore what is not. —Ingrid Wickelgren, Scientific American

The problem is that if you don’t have enough System 2 attention available to direct your focus, System 1 (the unconscious) will focus on what it thinks is important.

You use your conscious attention for many different things, some of which are necessary and unavoidable. You can exhaust it on important matters and complex tasks, for example. Or when you’re sick or injured or worried about a friend or family member. But you also probably squander conscious attention bit-by-bit on dozens of minor things throughout the day. Even worse, you may be squandering it on the same minor things day after day. Many of these things are literally just occupying space, thereby limiting the conscious attention you have available.

Inner Space and Outer Space

The things that occupy space in your mind (inner space) and in your environment (outer space) have an effect on the way you think, how effective your thinking is, and even what you think about. For example:

  • It’s difficult to focus your attention, solve a problem, or complete a complex or demanding task when you’re preoccupied with another issue (inner space).
  • It’s hard to focus or to think clearly when the surrounding decibel level gets above 90 (outer space).
  • It’s difficult to avoid thinking about how utterly and completely disorganized you are every time you can’t find something—or what a sloth you are you when you can’t invite guests over for dinner because the dining table has become the repository for several months’ worth of mail, numerous unfinished projects, and the general detritus of your daily life (outer space).
  • It’s next to impossible to be present or attentive when you’re in the process of running through your mental to-do list (inner space).

The more things occupying your inner and outer space at any given time, the less System 2 attention you have available. And the less System 2 attention you have available, the more likely you are to be at the effect of System 1 (unconscious/autopilot) thinking.

The Trouble with System 1 Attention

System 1 attention—also called bottom-up attention—isn’t always bad. In fact, it’s essential to your survival. But as Winifred Gallagher writes in Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life:

Bottom-up attention automatically keeps you in touch with what’s going on in the world, but this great benefit comes with a drawback, particularly for postindustrial folk who live in metropolitan areas and work at desks rather than on the savannah: lots of fruitless, unwelcome distractions. Maybe you want to focus on your book or computer instead of the fly that keeps landing on your arm or that ambulance’s siren, but just like your evolutionary forebears, you’re stuck with attending to those insistent stimuli.

Not only do you have to contend with a host of fruitless, unwelcome distractions in your environment over which you may have little to no control, you are also continually creating additional distractions in your environment and in your head.

The result is that, moment-to-moment, rather than being deliberately focused, your attention is likely to be spent responding to stimuli.

That’s important because what you put your attention on shapes the quality of your life.

We all have a limited amount of conscious attention available. We can’t easily get more, but we can learn how to make better use of what we have. A good first step is to try to identify what claims–and can drain–our conscious attention.

Filed Under: Attention, Brain, Consciousness, Living, Mind, Unconscious Tagged With: Attention, Brain, Consciousness, Distraction, Focus, Mind

How Many of these Myths Do You Believe?

March 12, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell 4 Comments

http://www.dreamstime.com/-image28475299These six beliefs are so pervasive they seem to be embedded in our culture. Most of them are meant to be motivational, but because they aren’t true, belief in these myths can have unintended consequences that harm rather than help. Ultimately, we need less external motivation and more straightforward education about how the brain and the mind actually work. Then we’ll be able to generate our own motivation—from inside.

Myth #1: We always have a choice.

The reality is that we rarely have a choice. The majority of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are the result of automatic brain processes. We operate on autopilot most of the time because that’s how our brain is wired. Contrary to popular belief, there’s not much we can do about that. But that’s neither an excuse nor a reason to give up. What we can do is reprogram some of our automatic behavior so it reflects what’s important to us and what we really want.

Myth #2: Anything is possible.

Sure there are lots of things we have the ability to change. But the reality is that we all have limits and constraints; we all face obstacles; and randomness plays a much greater role in our lives than we’d like to admit. No matter how many hours I put into practicing the violin, for example, if I have no musical talent (and I don’t), I will not be the next Jascha Heifetz or Joshua Bell. However, the more I practice the violin, the better a violinist I will become because although I may not be good, I can always get better.

Myth #3: To live a satisfying life, we need to identify our life purpose or passion.

The reality is that no matter how hard we search, we won’t find our life purpose because we don’t have one. In fact searching for a particular life purpose seems to lead more people to a state of paralyzing anxiety than it does to a sense of satisfaction or fulfillment. Giving up on the life-purpose myth can open the door to living with passion—which means identifying what we really want and then creating a big, juicy, satisfying life on our own terms.

Myth #4: It takes will power to achieve anything significant.

The reality is that will power is an unreliable resource that is easily exhausted. Will power and self-control are unequal to the task of changing habits or behavior or achieving big goals. We don’t need—and can’t get—more will power. What we do need is perseverance. Perseverance is what keeps us steadily moving toward the desired outcome regardless of setbacks or obstacles, adjusting course as we go. I call perseverance magic because it is.

Myth #5: If we focus our attention on the result we want, we’re more likely to get it.

The research has been in on this one for quite a while. The reality is that focusing on the end result (or outcome) of something we want actually decreases the likelihood we will get it. On the other hand, focusing our attention on the process—the individual steps or actions we need to take—increases the likelihood we’ll be successful.

Myth #6: We should always trust our gut.

The reality is that our gut instinct—otherwise known as intuition—is situation-specific and therefore fallible. Our unconscious (System 1) regularly makes suggestions to the conscious part of our brain (System 2). That’s what intuition is. If we know a lot about something or have a lot of experience in a particular area, we can probably rely on those suggestions. But intuition is not magic. In areas where we have no knowledge, skill, or experience, relying on intuition is a mistake. When intuition isn’t based on anything, it’s no better than a wild guess.

Letting go of these myths is one giant step toward creating a more deeply satisfying and meaningful life.

Filed Under: Beliefs, Brain, Choice, Consciousness, Living, Mind, Purpose, Wired that Way Tagged With: Behavior, beliefs, Brain, Choice, Habit, Mind, Purpose

Grateful for My Brain: a 2014 Year-End Review

January 5, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell 5 Comments

year end

Doing a year-end review has always been one of those things that seem like a good idea but which I never quite get around to. This past year was unique in a number of ways, and so I decided—almost on the spur of the moment—that it would be prudent and productive to spend some time evaluating what happened.

I’m a huge fan of list-making, so instead of using any of the many different tools, processes, and resources available, I conducted my review in the form of making several lists. This turned out to be so helpful that I’ve already put it on my calendar to do again at the end of 2015.

Here are my list headings:

What I accomplished

This was by far the longest of my lists. Because I have a tendency to dismiss what I have done in order to berate myself for what has yet to be done, making this list helped me stop and smell the roses a bit. It gave me greater perspective on the multiple endeavors I’ve been engaged in. It also showed me the areas where my attention was focused—and the areas where it wasn’t.

What I didn’t anticipate

There’s no question that this was the most useful of my lists. The more than two dozen things I hadn’t anticipated—roughly half positive and half negative—not only had a significant effect on my life in general and what I was able to accomplish, they also provide concrete evidence that I can’t predict the future no matter how much my brain wants me to believe I can. We can—and should—plan ahead, but it’s important to remember that getting from here to there is rarely a straight line. Randomness and luck often play a larger role in both process and outcome than we’d like to acknowledge.

What worked

It was good to recognize what I’m doing right so I can keep doing more of that.

What didn’t/doesn’t work

It was also good to recognize mistakes I’ve made, opportunities I’ve missed, or areas that need major or minor tweaking.

What I’m grateful for

In addition to many other things—and people—I’m grateful for my amazing brain (yours is equally amazing, of course) and all the fantastic tricks it can do. Read to the end to see what my brain did with the material from my year-end review.

What I learned

One thing I learned is that I have a lot more to learn! But it was illuminating to see how much more I know now than I knew at the beginning of last year. It gives me hope and also some confidence in the face of the always uncertain future. Here’s actual evidence that I figured out how to do quite a few new things, so it’s likely I’ll be able to figure out how to do more things I don’t yet know how to do.

What I’m not satisfied with or what needs more attention

This list helped me focus on where to put my attention now. It was the last 2014 list, which made it relatively easy to complete and included a couple of surprises. I’m pretty sure it would have been more difficult to hone in on these things if I had started with this category, and I might not have seen things as clearly.

I created just two lists for 2015:

What I want to have happen this year

15 things that are sort of a hodgepodge of goals, intentions, and hopes. This list and the list of what I’m not satisfied with are the foundation of my short-range (3-6 months) planning process.

4 habits I want to keep; 4 habits I want to improve or change; 4 habits I want to start

Again, it was useful to identify what I’m doing that’s working before listing what I want to change (what isn’t working so well). I limited each category to 4 to keep it manageable. A limit of 3 might be even better.

I worked on these lists in bursts of time over several days, so the content was on my mind—and in my brain—throughout that period. As the brain tends to do, mine started looking for solutions for some of the bigger problems I’d identified. And not just during the day! One very long night, I was unable to fall asleep because I couldn’t stop trying to figure everything out logically (as illogical as I knew it was to be doing that in the middle of the night—or maybe ever).

Then, in one of those sudden moments of clarity I’ve come to know and love, the solution to one of the problems just showed up (thank you, System 1!), and as soon as it did, I realized that particular solution also took care of two other problems. I hadn’t even seen the three things as being connected. At that point, I immediately fell asleep, only to be awakened by the alarm clock an hour and a half later.

In the clear light of another day, and after a decent night’s sleep, the solution that appeared in the wee hours that morning seems both obvious and elegant. But had I not laid the groundwork for it by focusing my attention on all these areas of my life, I doubt I’d even have been able to identify the problems. And even if I had identified them, I’d probably be trying to find individual solutions for each of them—using the slow, logical part of my brain.

The moral of the story (which I should have tattooed somewhere on my body, sans parenthetical expressions and asides): Use System 2—the conscious part of your brain—to lay the groundwork, and then give System 1 an opportunity to do its thing (which includes seeing patterns, making connections, and putting the pieces together) to come up with a creative solution System 2 can only stand back, figuratively speaking, and admire.

Filed Under: Attention, Brain, Clarity, Learning, Living, Mind, Unconscious Tagged With: Brain, Conscious, Lists, Mind, Problem solving, Unconscious, Year-End Review

Is There a Real You?

December 16, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

self-conceptThe answer may seem obvious; of course there’s a real you. But journalist and philosopher Julian Baggini, who studies the complexities of personal identity, offers a counterintuitive answer to the question. Baggini is the editor-in-chief of the Philosophers’ Magazine.

There are lots of different processes in the brain, all of which operate, in a way, quite independently. But it’s because of the way that they relate that we get this sense of self. I call it the ego trick. It’s not that we don’t exist, it’s just that the trick is to make us feel that inside of us is something more unified than is really there.

If you think of yourself as being, in a way, not a thing as such, but a kind of a process, something that is changing, then I think that’s quite liberating. Because we actually have the capacity to channel the direction of our development for ourselves to a certain degree. Now we’ve got to be careful here, right? If you watch the X-Factor too much, you might buy into this idea that we can all be whatever we want to be. That’s not true. There are limits to what we can achieve. There are limits to what we can make of ourselves. But nevertheless, we do have this capacity to, in a sense, shape ourselves. The true self, as it were then, is not something that is just there for you to discover, you don’t sort of look into your soul and find your true self, What you are partly doing, at least, is actually creating your true self.

To the extent you have a true self, it’s something that you in part discover, but in part create. And that, I think, is a liberating and exciting prospect.

Watch and listen to Baggini’s TED talk.

Filed Under: Beliefs, Brain, Consciousness, Living, Mind Tagged With: Brain, Julian Baggini, Personal Identity, Self Concept, True Self

Be Good to Your Brain

December 4, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

brain workoutWant to stay mentally sharp? There are all kinds of things you can do: listen to music, read a book, gaze at a building, help someone out, get involved in a hobby.

These activities not only make you feel good, they also happen to be very good for your brain in a variety of different ways.

Click on the links to read the full articles.

Listening to music benefits the brain in 8 surprising ways.

Playing a musical instrument benefits your brain even more by giving it an excellent “full-body” workout.

Looking at buildings designed for contemplation may produce the same health benefits provided by meditation—and with less effort.

Dancing, getting some hobbies, and reading (among other things) all help to keep your brain young.

Speaking of reading, ditching the e-reader once in a while and reading an actual book can increase your comprehension, make you more empathetic, and even improve your sleep.

No matter how old you are, learning a new language improves gray matter density and white matter integrity.

Finally, giving really is better than receiving—for you and for your brain.

Be good to your brain and your brain will continue being good to you!

Filed Under: Brain, Brain & Mind Roundup, Learning, Living, Memory, Mind Tagged With: Architecture, Brain, Language, Mental Sharpness, Mind, Music, Reading, Writing

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