Everyone of us look at ways to build on their multitasking ability to achieve their goals faster. At some point in time we even take pride that we’ve mastered this skill, after trying it all our life. But the errors in our important projects, relationship hiccups, and near missed accidents because we were busy multitasking with technology are just incidental. This book “The Distracted Mind – Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World” is a scientific discussion which doesn’t end with the solution of us returning to stone age (like a few books I have read before).
Why did I even choose to read this book at all? Well, I’ve always felt when authors from varied fields combine their experiences it makes up for an interesting read (It might end up being particularly good or terrible but interesting nevertheless). So, the authors of this book – Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen are celebrated professionals in their own field. Adam is a leading cognitive neuroscientist and Gazzley lab has produced several researches, which are well explored in this book. While Larry is famous for all his work on “Psychology of Technology” and six other popular books in the same field.
For the impatient mind who instantly wants to know if this should be your next read before we delve into the summary – Hmmm, it depends… If you’re looking for an easy-breezy self help guide, this is not the one for you. It is an MIT publication and a pseudo-scientific book, so obviously its rich and heavy. If you want to explore groundbreaking researches and rooted clarity on the struggles your brain undergoes in achieving the goals you’ve set, then grab a cup of coffee and search for a quiet corner. Trust me, you’ll need it and it will be worth your while.
The author explores this topic in three parts:
Part 1: “Cognitive and Essence of Control” is about our ancient brain and its functions. The same brain that helped launch satellites to Mars and solve complex problems every day, lets us down when we forget to pick up milk on your way back home – why? This is the heaviest chapter of the book. My general reading speed is about 70 pages / hour and I was barely crawling through 30 pages in this part. And, if you’re unfamiliar with neuropsychological brain terms it will reduce it further. There is so much to assimilate, yet it is absolutely captivating.
Part 2: “Behavior in a High-Tech World” you’ll pick up your pace back on, as you shuffle through loads of behavioral data that throws light on the psychology of technology, we use every day.
Part 3: “Taking Control” talks about practical yet scientific ways of staying focused and managing distraction on our path to achieving our goals.
Now, let’s dig into the summary and allow me to take you through my favorite immersions of the book.
Concept #1: Our brain is designed with limitations which makes us vulnerable to “goal interference”
“Goal interference occurs when you reach a decision to accomplish a specific goal (e.g., retrieve something from the refrigerator, complete a work assignment, engage in a conversation, drive your car) and something takes place to hinder the successful completion of that goal. The interference can either be generated internally, presenting as thoughts within your mind, or generated externally, by sensory stimuli such as restaurant chatter, beeps, vibrations, or flashing visual displays”
The book points out that our ability to set high level goals is the pinnacle of human brain evolution. This goal setting ability (executive functions) of the brain is – the most evolved brain, whereas the goal enactment ability (cognitive control functions) is – the unevolved brain and is similar to the primitive primate human.
This combat between the evolved brain and the primitive brain results in “goal interference” – a tension between what we want to do, and what we can do. Interference can be both internal and external and our brain is equally suspectable to both. But why do we indulge in it, knowing that it deteriorates our efficiency?
Case 1: The highest goals we had as primitive creature was survival and our goal enactment was foraging for food. And, whenever we found new food source, our brain rewarded us with hormones like dopamine (happiness hormone) and epinephrine (adrenaline rush) thereby giving us a sense of achievement.
Case 2: Today, our goals have highly evolved and our goal enactment is foraging for information. Whenever we find new information our brain is rewarding us similarly. And who doesn’t enjoy a good dosage of hormone? So, despite trying hard we are distracted by certain stimuli.
Concept #2: The evolution of the brain has created a “pause” and it’s significant.
“Brain evolution led to the insertion of a critical time delay that disrupts the reflexive nature of the perception-action cycle so that the neural processes that underlie goal setting—evaluation and decision making—may be engaged. This extraordinarily important pause in the cycle disrupts our reflexive responses to environmental stimuli, allowing us to generate top-down goals. These goals exert influence over both our perceptions and actions, which compete with those powerful bottom-up forces. But setting goals is not enough to affect our lives and the world around us; we need to enact our goals. The mediators of our top-down goals comprise another amazing collection of abilities that fall under the umbrella of cognitive control. This includes three major faculties: (1) attention, (2) working memory, and (3) goal management, each consisting of subcomponent processes. It is this battery of cognitive control abilities that allows us to interact in our complex world in a dynamic and goal-directed manner. And with varying degrees of success, it is what allows us to resist the negative impact of goal interference.”
As a primitive being, we reacted automatically to all external stimuli. This is called bottom-up influence. We still do this, and it’s called patellar reflex (knee-jerk reaction). We can do nothing to stop them as they are a mark of our survival instinct. But with evolution, our brain developed what’s called a “pause” between the perception – action cycle. During this pause, our brain evaluates the situation before acting. For example, when a child pinches us, we immediately flinch away from the pain (bottom-up influence) but we don’t retaliate as our evaluation tells us the baby’s actions were not malicious (Top-down influence). The conflict between the bottom-up and top-down influence is called “Biased Competition” which we face every day in our life.
The top-down mechanism helps us to set top-down goals (highly evolved goals) whereas our goal enactment ability is strongly influenced by bottom-up forces (immediate response to a stimuli) that keeps us constantly distracted. For example: A research shows 95% of population checks their phone 150 times/day or every 6 or 7 minutes they are awake. A clear indication that we give in to our bottom-up influences more often than we want to.
Our goal enactment ability (cognitive control ability) consists of three main domains: Attention + Working memory + Goal management. Each domain has its own set of limitations conflicting with the superior goals we’ve set for ourselves.
Concept #3: Is our impulsive foraging for information optimum? Let’s understand through Marginal Value Theorem (MVT)
“Marginal value theorem (MVT), which has been used for decades to explain why, how, and when animals take the time and energy to travel to a new patch with additional food, rather than gather dwindling food resources from their current patch. In its simplest form, the MVT explains the cost–benefit relationship of remaining in a food patch versus moving to a new patch, with an animal’s drive to survive as the instinctive force to accumulate resources. An animal’s ability to find nourishment by spending an “optimal time” at one source before traveling to another is a critical factor in its survival.”
Marginal Value Theorem (MVT) was effectively used for several years to understand the animal’s food foraging behavior and now its been proved that this theory holds good for understanding human’s information foraging behavior (distractions) and its root causes.
Let’s try to understand this with a palatable example. A squirrel forages for acorns in a tree and finds it in abundance, so it starts munching on them and doesn’t feel the need to find another tree, until the current tree has run out of acorns and it becomes really difficult to find food regularly. Hence, the current food resource has been optimally utilized. The MVT is used to predict the exact time this can happen based on the inputs available.
The same MVT can also be used to predict our foraging behavior, and the only difference is the squirrel’s behavior is optimal while ours is not.
The reason is, in our world the “other tree” is a click away and practically in our pockets. So negligible effort is required from our end, unlike for the squirrel which needs to expend considerable effort to find the other tree. Worst of all, the squirrel doesn’t get acorns thrown by the other tree, regularly arousing it’s temptation, whereas our mobile pop-ups do that to us. Based on this theory three causes were found for sub-optimal foraging behavior (distractions).
(I)Accessibility – No cost to move and readily available. (II) Boredom – Our hyper-stimulating environment has left us practically with nil tolerance for boredom. We need constant action and technology provides it in abundance. (III)Anxiety – we are so attuned to information overload that two new psychological disorders have crept-in in the last few years. FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and nomophobia (the fear of being disconnected from your phone).
When we combine these three ingredients, we get a recipe for constant “Goal Interference”. Where we keep constantly jumping from one website to another WhatsApp message to another Facebook update. And, according to the author the three key technologies that influence our cognitive control the most are (1) The Internet (2) Social media and (3) Smart phone
Concept #4: The final verdict on Multitasking
“Despite great confidence in their multitasking abilities, suffer a significant multitasking cost: accuracy on the sign task dropped by 27 percent when they navigated the car at the same time. Thus, goal enactment that requires cognitive control, whether it is the domain of working memory or selective attention, is detrimentally impacted by a secondary goal that also demands cognitive control. However, you do not have to be multitasking, or attempting to simultaneously complete two tasks, to exhibit performance costs. We experience costs even when we explicitly decide to switch between tasks. This is true even for simple tasks, as long as they demand some degree of cognitive control.”
Our brain is not designed for multitasking and will always remain incapable of it. All the brain ever does is “Task Switching”, like the computer. But, even this process comes at a cost on quantity (reduction in speed of both the primary and secondary task) and quality (the tasks are more error prone). So whether you are trying to do two tasks at the same time (using phone while driving) or quickly switching between tasks (checking messages while working on your report) you are doing it at a cost of both quality and quantity.
A study shows younger adults switch task on an average of 27 times every hour, older adults do it a little less, but 17 times every hour is still quite high.
The most fascinating research I found in this chapter is people who are extremely sure that they are good at multitasking are infact the worst at it. They are the ones who pay dearly for their act of multitasking and aren’t even aware of it.
Concept #5: Taking control by changing our brain (Neuroplasticity)
“Let us consider the entire landscape of approaches that have potential to enhance our core cognitive control abilities. First, there are approaches that, although distinct in their implementation, are similar in that they expose individuals to specifically tailored environments, interactions, and experiences that stimulate brain plasticity. These include both traditional and modern approaches of education, meditation, nature exposure, cognitive exercises, video game training, and physical exercises. Second, and by far the most widely engaged approach to impact cognition for individuals with deficits, is the ingestion of designer molecules, also known as drug treatment. Third, there are interventions—neurofeedback and brain stimulation—that may seem more natural in the world of science fiction but are actually active research areas.”
I felt like a kid in Disneyland in this chapter, as I browsed through tool after tool for cognitive control enhancement. The tools were categorized into traditional and modern approaches. The traditional ones are more accessible to us, while the modern approaches like neurofeedback and brain simulation are yet to be made available for common usage.
Every time I went through Hindu mythologies like “Ramayana” and “Mahabharat” I always wondered why the protagonists always lived a forest life, where for the majority of their time they practiced their warfare, meditated and wandered through forest, right before their ultimate war against the antagonists. A few of the very accessible cognitive control enhancement strategies, I read in this book threw light on how scientifically well thought out those methodologies were.
Physical exercise is the only “Prescribed” (fail proof) methodology for neuroplasticity. The author says when physical exercise is combined with cognitive exercise, they work the best in enhancing cognitive control. When I was thinking about what could possibly combine both, all I could decipher was martial art forms like Silambam, Kalarippayattu etc., even a few minutes of such activities are expected to boost your ability to manage distraction. The author even dictates that a combination of strength training and cardio helps us way better than just cardio.
Meditation and nature exposure were the two other tools, which fascinated me amongst others like video games, different approaches to education etc. The book indicates the more tools we practice concurrently, the better your changes in the brain will be.
Concept #6: Taking control by changing your behavior.
“Changing your behavior may not be easy, but it is doable. If you find yourself being distracted, ask yourself the following questions: *How might I increase my metacognitive view of how my own mind performs in a given situation, and in what ways are my actions not in line with how I should behave based on my goals and an understanding of my limitations? *How might I change my physical environment to reduce accessibility of potential distractors? *How might I assess whether I am self-interrupting because of boredom, and how might I make the task more interesting to stave off that boredom? *How might I recognize when my actions are driven by anxiety about missing out on something in my virtual world, and what steps can I take to reduce that anxiety?”
Changes in the brain alone don’t guarantee success in the real world, our behaviors also need to be adapted. Before we get into those behaviors, we need to understand that a laser sharp focus is not required at all times, we can choose to implement our modified behavior only in critical situations.
Critical situations quoted by the author are: (1) while driving (2) during critical assignments (3) while sleeping (4) during important social interactions. The reason for why these situations have been chosen are beautifully elucidated in this chapter.
The four behaviors which need to be modified in the above chosen critical incidences are based on the root causes we discussed:
- Metacognition: Awareness on the effects of lack of cognitive control. The very purpose of this book is this. If you imbibe these concepts well, you’ve checked off the first box.
- Accessibility: The simplest way to remain focused is to remove temptation entirely from the environment, so rid your environment of all technological devices, if not atleast reduce the access to an emergency only mode. E.g. no technology devices in the bedroom or during family dinners.
- Boredom: Find non-technological ways to make your environment more stimulating, like interesting conversations during family gatherings and pleasant music while driving.
- Anxiety: FOMO causes considerable stress these days. In order to overcome them, create appropriate expectation about your social availability time to your family, friends, and colleagues. Also, pre-schedule three to four technology break times to check your messages instead of doing it 24/7.
My concluding thoughts on the book:
I was on an emotional wave the entire time I was reading the book. Most of the time the book left me with an emotional high, while in a few places it just left me hanging. I thought I will pen down a few of them as well, just in case you feel the same way while browsing the book, you’ll atleast know that you aren’t alone in feeling them.
Things which hit the highest notes for me were when it established itself as a compendium of empirical views, results from experiments and research data, keeping me scientifically grounded the entire time and establishing credibility in the first few pages itself. Despite the heavy data, the topics were explained with such simple examples that I could instantly reflect and draw parallels with my own life. The author even established the scientific strength of each of his solution strategies: (1) Reasonable hypothesis – have some literature validation (2) Signal – have some experimental validation (3) Prescriptive – have irrevocable proof. These validations kindled my conviction in implementing them in my life.
Things that slightly weighed me down while reading were: (a) extensive detailing on brain structure which wasn’t entirely required for this topic.(if readers were keen in such subjects they can get to “Cortex and Mind” by Joaquin Fuster or David Groome concepts for it). (b) Repetitions on accessibility, boredom and anxiety in part 2 and part 3, loosened the riveting grip the rest of the book had, and my ancient distracted mind was struggling to focus.
The one disappointment I had was, I’d sincerely wished the author had given more direct answers on his recommendations. First of all, the book’s claim is “Offer practical strategies to accomplish our goal better”, yet 70% of the book focused was on the issue and only 30% on the solution. Secondly, when the author talks about solutions like cognitive exercise, video game or different approaches to education – no recommendation on where and how to identify them in the market was mentioned. It’s left open to the interpretation of the readers and I’m not a neuroscientist to pick the right brand. Common people like me might benefit better if such loose ends were tied up.
Having said that, this book lives up to the claim of being the first of its kind in exploring the challenges our brain faces in this high-tech world. Just the awareness could be our first step in facilitating our ancient brain at optimally engaging with technology and reaching our highest potential.