A Focused Mind - Part 1
This importance of a focused work is represented in Teddy Roosevelt’s study routine as well during his Harvard college years. Roosevelt, as his biographer Edward Morris states, had an array of interests - boxing, wrestling, body-building, poetry readings, dance lessons and a lifelong obsession with naturalism. He was so passionate about this latter interest that his tenant was not very pleased with him bringing and dissecting small animals in his rented apartment. Roosevelt also went ahead to publish his first book, The Birds of the Adirondecks, during summer after his freshman year. It was very well received by Bulletin of the Nuttal Ornithological Club, that took bird books seriously.
After all this extra-curricular exuberance, you might think that his studies were impacted. This is far from truth. Yes he wasn’t at the top of the class but he didn’t struggle either. How was this man able to juggle through all these multiple arrays of interests so well? Our answer lies in his approach towards his studies. Roosevelt would begin scheduling his day by considering the eight hours from eight thirty a.m to four thirty p.m. He would then remove all the time spent in classes, recitation, athletic training and lunch. He would now be left with less that a quarter of the day. He dedicated these remaining hours to only studying with intense concentration. As Morris states, “The amount of time he spent at his desk was comparatively small but his concentration was so intense and his reading so rapid that he could afford more time off (from studies) than most.”
These two of many examples along with scientific research and proofs, some of which I might be stating in this article, shed light on the importance of working (or studing) without distraction with intense concentration. This helps you produce at an elite level and master hard concepts and difficult things relatively easily considering the fact that most people around you are living a distracted life. This is what Cal Newport terms as “Deep Work”. Most of the employees in the worksplace or students in colleges and schools, as a result of lack of proper concentration and fragmented attention drag their tasks for significantly longer than they should. This lack of focus coupled with our social media use exacerbates the problem of mediocrity in employees, knowledge workers and students where you just “get things done” with a drag.
This article highlights the significance of depth and focus in a distracted world.
Why Deep Work Works
Master craftsmen like potters or painters are able to make pottery or paint effortlessly whereas if we tried to produce work like them, we remain defeated. Similarly, we all have come across students in our school life, who were able to solve difficult problems effortlessly and those who could recall things in an instant while we would mug up theories only to forget them after a few days.
There are two questions here - “What is the reason for such a craftsmanship or apparently prodigal memory?” and “Why the answer works?”
The answer to the first part is - working or studying with intense level of concentration and without distraction. The answer to the second part unveils why focused work without distraction helps achieve such mastery over things and it lies in how our neurons work.
Myeling is a layer of fatty tissue that surrounds the neurons. The more mastery you have over a specific skill, the more myelin layers the relevant neurons have around them which helps them fire electric signals for that skill more effortlessly and more effectively. When you are in a state of flow focusing on a specific task without distraction, it triggers the relevant neurons to fire again and again which leads to cells, known as oligodendrocytes wrap myelin around the those neurons. Therefore, the intensity of focus of focus is directly proportional to how well myelinated your neurons are. This is the answer why craftsmen have such mastery over their arts - persistent and deliberate practice with zero or minimal distraction.
“To advance the understanding of your field, you must tackle the relevant topics systematically, following your converging rays of attention to uncover the latent truth in each.” ~Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges
Attention Fragmentation
When you switch from one task to another, your mind doesn’t immediately switch to that task. There’s some amount of attention that is still working on the preceding task in your subconsciousness. Sophie Leroy, a business professor at the University of Minnesota termed this amount of attention as attention residue.
The more multitasking you do, the more switches your mind needs to make and every switch costs you a sliver of your attention. As amount of attention residue piles up in your subconscious, it leads to poor performance because your attention is fragmented and you are not able to concentrate properly at the current task and therefore not being able to give it your all. For computer science students, the CPU context switching example is a good analogy to understand this concept.
This also shows how short form of content consumption from Instagram reels or YouTube shorts, is a cause of attention fragmentation along with other negative impacts.
Escaping Boredom
We try to fill up every small dx of time with some amount of, usually unnecessary mind draining low-value, activities to escape one thing that seems strange and often novel to the modern mind - boredom.
A focused mindset is a state to be in and not a to-do on your list to mark off after you’re done. If you dedicate some hours every day to work deeply without distraction but spend the rest of the time in a state of stimulation primarily ignited by social media, being bombarded with constant digital pings and fleeing boredom, you will not reap the benefits of your efforts that are nullified by your bad habits. Our muscles grow only after going through intense workout and healthy diet and this is not easy. Akin to this, you must train your “mental muscles” for focus for it is a skill that our mind can be trained for. It might not be easy in the beginning but it is worth every mental struggly you go through.
As Cal Newport put it best, “You’ll struggle to develop the deepest levels of concentration if you spend the rest of time fleeing the slightest hint of boredom.” You must train your mind to become independent of and stop relying on distraction.
Conclusion
This concludes Part 1. Boredom is a vast topic that we have barely scratched the surface in this essay. It might seem like an abrupt ending but I try to keep my articles short and up to the point. While writing the preceding section, I realised that it needs a dedicated article in itself.
In this article we read about why deep work is valuable, why it works and how constant multitasking and why short form consumption is not good for a healthy and focused brain.
So I decided to break this article into two parts. The follwing part will focus primarily on the concept of boredom and how it is related to focus. Until then, adios.