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Good article. I've been thinking along the same lines. While working at home, I initially tried to focus for 100 percent of the time. I played music and always
by anon2020dot00 5y ago
Good article. I've been thinking along the same lines.
While working at home, I initially tried to focus for 100 percent of the time. I played music and always tried to be in the flow. It didn't work and my mind would break; by break, it seemed like my mind got stuck in a repetitive loop.
What did work for me was meditation (just focusing on something neutral like an object I held in my hand) and Pomodoro. Pomodoro naturally has intervals to shift from focused mode to unfocused mode.
Another thing that helped me is a lowkey activity of reading something light on my E-Paper tablet. I'd play an audiobook and read on the tablet so that I can follow along and then catch-up with the audiobook; my mind would wander or unfocus then I can focus it again by catching-up my reading with the audiobook.
Meditation I think is also just shifting from focused to unfocused again and again. The mind wanders then is brought back or focused to a neutral place and then it wanders again. It's not about always being focused on the neutral object but letting the mind shift between the two modes again and again.
The article also reminds me of the Barbara Oakley course on "Learning How to Learn" in which she highlights the importance of the focused and diffused mode.
- gerbilly 5y agoI think you're right. There seems to be two sorts of attention in the mind, narrowly focused attention and broad diffuse attention. I see the goal of meditation not so much as alternating between the two modes but rather like balancing them and running them both in parallel. This entire video is really excellent, but see particularly this bit here, where Iain McGilchrist describes the concept. https://youtu.be/dFs9WO2B8uI?t=88 https://youtu.be/dFs9WO2B8uI?t=88
- anon2020dot00 5y agoInteresting, a lot to ponder on with regards to "The Divided Brain". The diffused mode could be the broad diffuse attention while focus mode is the the narrowly focused attention. It seems like there is specialized parts in the brain for attention with one hemisphere for narrow and the other for broad. But I think that this is just one theory and it could also be the case that these two modes are more evenly distributed throughout the brain.
- gerbilly 5y agoI wasn't really focused so much on where in the brain the two types of attention were located. It may be as he describes it in the video, or it may not. For meditation, however, I feel strongly that the goal is to achieve a balanced state of mind, and the balance is as I understand it, is between these two types of attention.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoMy (admittedly strange) meditation practice is like this but also includes reading and writing. All mental states are welcome: ingesting external input, taking notes on the input, reviewing notes, rewriting notes, writing fresh thoughts, pondering with a goal, pondering without one, and pondering nothing, just sensing my environment.