In this age of information explosion and constant distractions, concentration is not a specific problem for individuals but a common phenomenon, not controlled by human will but by conscious brain. No matter how hard you try, you cannot keep yourself from wandering. Pressure, negative emotions, and threats further affect the performance of the attention system.
The book “Peak Mind,” recommended by Xù Bà ® (Chinese name: “Deliberate Focus”), points out that the real terror is not distraction itself but not noticing when you are distracted, only realizing it afterwards.
To help us reclaim control of our brains, the book details a mindfulness attention training method that only takes 12 minutes a day. Through this method, we can train ourselves to quickly notice distraction and refocus our attention on the current task, effectively enhancing our concentration and work efficiency. Before mastering this method, let’s first understand the working principle of attention.
01. Working Principle of Attention System
The attention system is one of the powerful functions of our brain. It gives us the unique ability to accurately recognize friends’ faces in a chaotic world, read and understand texts to gain knowledge, reminisce on beautiful moments, and imagine future possibilities. What is the attention currently focused on? What is it blocking out? How does it affect your life?
The book mentions that the attention system consists of three parts; the first subsystem is the orienting system, which the author aptly names the flashlight.
This orienting system is like a flashlight – wherever you point the beam, that area is illuminated while other areas are dimmed.
You can choose to point the flashlight towards the external environment or internally towards your thoughts, emotions, memories, bodily sensations, and more.
The second subsystem is the alerting system, referred to as the floodlight by the author; in contrast to the flashlight, the floodlight is diffuse and broad, activating when you’re in a state of alertness.
When the environment changes, you can react promptly and shift your attention swiftly in any direction.
The third subsystem is the executive function, formally known as the central executive system, responsible for guiding, supervising, and managing our behavior.
When you have a goal, whether it’s finishing a chapter in a book, cleaning the living room, or more significant goals like a promotion or starting a family, you need to face challenges and avoid distractions along the way.
02. Three Major Factors Affecting Attention
The executive function aligns behavior with the goal to ensure timely completion. However, the attention system is not indestructible; three factors can disrupt our attention: pressure, negative emotions, and danger.
Moderate beneficial pressure can provide motivation, but when the intensity exceeds a critical point, it starts eroding your attention.
Your flashlight may get caught up in negative thinking, the alerting system becomes active, and the brain uncontrollably rehashes past unpleasant experiences or frets about irrelevant future concerns.
If you endure excessive stress for a prolonged period, you will fall into a vicious cycle of attention decline.
Negative emotions have a similar effect – when you feel anxious or sad, your brain becomes filled with negative emotions, making it difficult to concentrate on tasks.
Likewise, feeling threatened makes it hard to focus on the task at hand or accomplish any goals and plans.
When the brain senses a threat, attention is reallocated, and anything related to the threat immediately captures attention.
Next, let’s discuss the adversary of attention – distraction. Scientists refer to distraction as cognitive dark matter because it is ever-present but invisible.
These types of brain activities are unconscious thoughts that divert your mind from the task at hand, also known as task-unrelated thinking.
However, task-unrelated thinking comes with a cost – distractions lead to three main issues. Firstly, you experience perceptual decoupling when you’re distracted, causing your perception to disconnect from the surrounding environment.
Your flashlight shines on your daydreams in your mind, darkening the world around you, leading to the second problem – errors occur because your ability to perceive and interact with the surrounding environment is impaired.
Finally, the third problem distraction causes is stress; every time you get distracted and come back to focus, you might feel some negative emotions, whether it’s irritation or guilt.
This is also known as the reentry cost, the cost of returning to the present moment and focusing on the task again.
After all, the brain’s wandering during tasks can have a negative impact on you.
03. How Attention Determines Our Memory?
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The first step of mindfulness training: Finding your flashlight
You will miss things, make mistakes, deteriorate emotionally, be absent-minded, not take the work that needs to be done seriously, not listen carefully to others, and even not take the unconscious distraction control seriously. What we can do is learn to be aware of our distractions.
This is the first step of the mindfulness training we are discussing today, finding your flashlight.
The things we notice are written into the working memory and then selectively encoded into long-term memory. These long-term memories become the raw material for the brain to simulate. Our brains are incredible virtual reality machines; we are constantly simulating the world in our brains, imagining the future to plan, strategize, and prepare.
Researchers have found a correlation between emotional management capacity and working memory capacity – those with lower working memory find it challenging to control themselves.
On the other hand, those with higher working memory capacity can better manage their emotions and responses.
They can also encode their goals more forcefully into the working memory. But the bad news is, working memory is limited.
When you try to remember too much, exceeding the limits of working memory, you may experience a common phenomenon: “chunks.”
For example, you enter a room and suddenly forget what you were supposed to do, or open the fridge and forget what you needed. This is when external or internal distractions, once they enter the working memory, overwrite the previous contents.
Therefore, attention and our working memory are closely interlinked; they must cooperate to smoothly achieve our goals.
Mindfulness training can improve working memory by clearing this whiteboard. Speaking of mindfulness meditation, many people may think of it as pressing the pause button, pausing life for a moment, but in reality, life does not have a pause button. What we are seeking is the play button, not ruminating over the past nor worrying about the future, but staying in the playback mode, listening to what is happening right now.
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The second step of mindfulness training: Pressing play
The second exercise of mindfulness training is pressing play, observing your whiteboard. Through this exercise, you can identify what is on your whiteboard and what you often think about when distracted.
When you are playing the current moment, you can use it to fill your whiteboard with the present moment. If you then press the record button, encoding a segment of your experience from working memory creates a long-term memory.
So, if you want to remember things you care about more effectively, you need to immerse yourself in them devotedly.
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The third step of mindfulness training: Body scan
Sometimes, when experiencing precious moments, we tend to capture them to remember and appreciate them later.
However, the truth is, you can only record in the playback mode, memory begins with the present moment, you can’t come back later, you can only use attention in the current moment.
Realizing this may change your lifestyle. Filming a concert with your phone instead of admiring it with your eyes can diminish your experience and memory.
When spending quality time with your child, if your attention is still on unresolved work messages, the child’s smiles and words at that moment won’t stay in your memory.
Therefore, to better remember things you care about, you need to immerse yourself in them devotedly. This brings us to the third mindfulness practice, body scanning.
You can use this exercise to bring yourself back to your body, by comfortably sitting down, closing your eyes, and focusing on your breath.
But this time, you won’t focus solely on your breath; instead, you need to spread your awareness throughout your body. Start by directing your attention to your toes, focusing on the sensation in your toes.
Then slowly move your attention, gradually shifting from the lower body to the pelvis, moving to the upper body, your shoulders, hands, and finally up to your neck, face, head, paying attention to the moment-to-moment sensations.
If you get distracted, bring it back and continue. This training will help you understand how your emotions manifest in your body.
You will gradually gain more data on your emotions and physical sensations.
Mindfulness practices can help you fully immerse your attention in the present, making your episodic memory richer.
The things we notice are written into the working memory, then selectively encoded into long-term memory, and these long-term memories become the raw material for the brain to simulate.
Our brain is an incredible virtual reality machine; we are consistently simulating the world in our brains, imagining the future to plan, strategize, and prepare.
Brain simulation is an incredibly powerful and useful ability, enabling us to project ourselves into the minds of others or into the past and future, experiencing our feelings under various scenarios, creating vivid virtual realities to guide decision-making.
The materials we use during simulation are often subtle, flawed, incomplete, or even incorrect content.
Positive meditation practice facilitates maintaining the current moment without indulging in associations and processing, clearly observing the situation, avoiding meaningless analysis and reasoning.
Don’t connect it with your past experiences; don’t imagine what might happen next – just observe attentively.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t engage in simulation but that we should have the ability to switch from simulation mode to mindfulness mode.
This allows us to detach from imagination and emotions, open our eyes to see the reality around us, rather than being lost in the virtual reality constructed by the brain.
In an era rife with uncertainty, it’s vital to have the ability to switch to a positive mode, at least for a few minutes, abandoning stories and focusing on observing the situation, solving real-world problems.
You need to abandon stories, stay in the playback mode, reminding yourself that thoughts are not facts.
Any of your thoughts, predictions are just possibilities, not necessarily unfolding as you imagine; becoming immersed in negative memories or fantasies is redundant behavior.
Often, a successful leader is believed to have a forward-thinking mindset, able to imagine all possible scenarios, strategize and prepare but the author believes this is a misconception about leadership.
On the contrary, the key to better future planning is to fully engage in the present, observing the environment, your emotions, and those of others. While concentration is essential, it’s more important to be able to detach focus when necessary, guide how and when to focus.
In essence, you should pay attention to your attention. This is called meta-awareness, as if you are observing yourself detachedly, watching where your attention is.
You should ask yourself, what are you paying attention to? What are you feeling? Observe how you manage your feelings. All the training we’ve talked about today is essentially training this meta-awareness.
When you become aware of where your attention is and what your mind is doing, you gain the ability of meta-awareness. This brings us to the fourth exercise given in the book – the stream of consciousness.
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The fourth step of mindfulness training: Stream of consciousness
The fourth exercise is the most abstract one. It starts the same as the previous exercises, focusing on your breath.
Then, broaden your awareness, imagine your mind as a river, standing on the riverbank observing the water flow past.
Imagine your thoughts, memories, feelings, and emotions flowing before you – don’t engage, don’t judge if you’re daydreaming, just let them flow.
Visualize your breath as a giant rock in the flowing water – keep your attention on this stone.
These are the four brief exercises of positive training presented to you.
After repeated experimentation, the author suggests the minimum required dose of training is four weeks, five days a week, twelve minutes a day. By the fourth week, you should alternate between finding your flashlight and connectivity exercises.
This exercise aims to send good wishes to yourself and others during meditation, hoping for happiness, health, and safety for everyone. Cultivating your integrity and the ability to offer kindness to yourself and others. Beyond the four weeks, each week’s practice alternates between these exercises.
Mindfulness practice guides us to focus on the present in situations of high pressure and anxiety, helping you enhance your ability to endure pain, manage emotions, and self-recover. It not only improves your attention and working memory capacity but also boosts your confidence in facing the future because you know you have the psychological capacity to handle such situations.
04. Accessing Efficient Joy in the Age of Distractions
Attention strengthens important things and weakens distractions, allowing us to think deeply, plan, and solve problems.
As the author says, attention weaves together the colors, tastes, thoughts, memories, emotions, decisions, and actions of every moment, forming the basic structure of life; what you pay attention to is your life.
Can you let go of expectations, see the real situation, avoid overreacting, judgment, and imagination, observe things as they really are, and truly live in the now, experiencing, learning, remembering, and acting?
Sometimes, giving your mind a moment of emptiness to flow and create freely is more valuable than filling it with things.
