As I was rushing a deadline today, I needed a few hours of focus. My mind instinctively knew what to do: I turned on Do Not Disturb mode on my phone and my watch (yes I bought the watch in the end), I exited chat applications, and I turned on some music that I could focus with and I was in the zone. For a while.
In this article, researchers found out that our brain focuses not by placing “more attention” on an object, but by blocking out distractions in your mind:
“In effect, the network was turning the knobs on inhibitory processes, not excitatory ones, with the TRN inhibiting information that the prefrontal cortex deemed distracting. If the mouse needed to prioritize auditory information, the prefrontal cortex told the visual TRN to increase its activity to suppress the visual thalamus — stripping away irrelevant visual data. The attentional searchlight metaphor was backward: The brain wasn’t brightening the light on stimuli of interest; it was lowering the lights on everything else.”
Quanta Magazine, 2019
It’s highly improbable to focus and to do the heavy lifting with your brain when your attention is constantly bombarded with pings on your phone or email alerts on your computer. When you have to focus, be ruthless and decisive with your distractions – cut them off completely so you can do your best work. The science supports it.
The PPE 