“Don’t take breaks from distraction. Instead take breaks from focus.”
- Cal Newport, Deep Work
Reading Cal Newport’s groundbreaking book, Deep Work; Rules for Success in a Distracted World, impacted me so profoundly that I am writing a second blog about what I have learned. I haven’t even quite finished reading the book…but over the past month, I have been gradually implementing much of what I’ve learned into my daily routine. And I can safely say: my ability to concentrate during my deep work morning writing sessions is already improving. Thank goodness!
In my first blog about Newport’s book, Deep Work versus Shallow Work, I wrote about why it is so important for knowledge workers to make ‘deep work’ a priority in their work day. In this blog, I will get into the how.
But first a bit more about the why:
“The use of a distracting service,” explains Newport, referring to e-mail, social media, and pretty much any activity on the internet, “does not by itself reduce your brain’s ability to focus. It’s instead the constant switching from a low stimuli/high value activity to high stimuli/low value activities, at the slightest hint of boredom or cognitive challenge, that teaches your mind to never tolerate an absence of novelty.”
To support this claim, Newport cites Clifford Nass, the late Stanford communications professor who was well known for his study of behaviour in the digital age:
“We have scales that allow us to divide up people into people who multitask all the time and people who rarely do, and the differences are remarkable. People who multitask all the time can’t filter out irrelevancy. They can’t manage a working memory. They’re chronically distracted. They initiate much larger parts of their brain that are irrelevant to the task at hand…they’re pretty much mental wrecks.”
Whoa!
“Unfortunately,” Nass continues, “they’ve developed habits of mind that make it impossible for them to be laser-focused. They’re suckers for irrelevancy. They just can’t keep on task.”
This is alarming to me. It also helps explain why so many people can’t seem to stay focused long enough to complete a single task…let alone stay somewhat on track during a conversation. The average attention span reminds me (sadly) of the little silver ball zinging around a pin pall machine.
Newport explains why:
“Once your brain has become accustomed to on-demand distraction, Nass discovered, it’s hard to shake the addiction even when you want to concentrate.”
Or, put another way…that will likely hit home from many people, not just knowledge workers:
“If every moment of potential boredom in your life—say, having to wait five minutes in line or sit alone in a restaurant until a friend arrives—is relieved with a quick glance at your smartphone, then your brain has likely been rewired to a point where, like the “mental wrecks” in Nass’s research, it’s not ready for deep work—even if you regularly schedule time to practice this concentration.”
Oh boy.
“Many assume that they can switch between a state of distraction and one of concentration as needed,” says Newport. “But once you’re for wired distraction, you crave it.”
So…how to solve this problem?
Well, let’s start with what won’t work: a temporary digital detox/Internet Sabbath.
A digital detox requires that you put aside regular time—typically one day a week— where you reframe from using your smart phone, e-mail, social media, surfing the web, etc. “The Internet Sabbath,” says Newport, “is meant to remind you of what you miss when you are glued to a screen.”
“But once we see the distraction problem in terms of brain wiring,” he explains, “it becomes clear that an Internet Sabbath cannot by itself cure a distracted brain.”
“If you eat healthy just one day a week, you’re unlikely to lose weight, as the majority of your time is still spent gorging. Similarly, if you spend just one day a week resisting distractions,” writes Newport, “you’re unlikely to diminish your brain’s craving for these stimuli, as most of your time is still spent giving in to it.”
Aha!
And so, Newport proposes an alternative to the Internet Sabbath/digital detox idea: “Instead of scheduling the occasional break from distraction, so you can focus, you should instead schedule the occasional break from focus to give in to distraction.”
Do you see the difference?
To achieve this, Newport suggests you “schedule in advance when you’ll use the Internet, and then avoid it altogether outside these times.”
That may sound extreme but again, it’s not the use of the internet that reduces our brain’s ability to focus. Instead it’s the constant switching between doing deep work (low-stimuli/high-value activity) and using the internet/e-mail/social media (high-stimuli/low-value activity) that teaches our mind to never tolerate an absence of novelty.
“The constant switching can be understood analogously as weakening the mental muscles responsible for organizing the many sources vying for your attention,” explains Newport. “By segregating internet use (and therefore segregating distraction), you’re minimizing the number of times you give in to distraction, and by doing so you let these attention-selecting muscles strengthen.”
What about you?
Are you able to stand in line at the grocery store…and not look at your phone? Do you ever just sit and stare out the window, thinking or daydreaming? Has reaching for your phone become so automatic you don’t even realize it anymore? Might you be addicted to distraction? If so, does this concern you? Is it impacting your ability to focus deeply when the task requires you to do so?
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