{"id":341,"date":"2012-06-12T16:11:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-12T16:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.workplaceinteractors.com\/theinteraction\/?p=341"},"modified":"2012-06-12T16:11:00","modified_gmt":"2012-06-12T16:11:00","slug":"distraction-in-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.workplaceinteractors.com\/theinteraction\/2012\/06\/12\/distraction-in-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Distraction in action"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We’re all about practice, so I’ve spent the past few (very busy) weeks playing with the ideas in my last post<\/a>:\u00a0 that in the creative process, distractibility might be more valuable than concentrated focus.<\/p>\n

Since I’ve sometimes tended to see my own darting mind as a bit of a shameful liability, I thought I’d just let it go where it wanted and observe the results. What if these studies are correct, and the capacity for being distracted is a bit of a gift, rather than a shortcoming?<\/p>\n

[At this point, unsure where to go next,\u00a0 I stopped and checked my email.\u00a0 Back again!]<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve noticed that shifting to another activity for a brief time seems to operate as a kind of mental “refresh” button.\u00a0 I don’t know if the distraction makes some obscure connection or shifts thinking to another part of the brain, but here I am, working at a good clip.\u00a0 My writing process seems to alternate between focused concentration and distracted poking about.\u00a0 Sometimes the oscillation is rapid; sometimes I’ll focus for ten or fifteen minutes at a time before skittering off.<\/p>\n

[Listening to the birds outside.\u00a0 Noticing a bill I have to pay tomorrow.\u00a0 Going off to check an email that just came in.\u00a0 Be right back.]<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>All right, I’ll stop trying to be James Joyce here.\u00a0 But after my experiments of the last couple of weeks, it’s clear to me that the distractibility that my teachers found frustrating is a good friend to my own creative process.<\/p>\n

New solutions come from new connections, and too much concentration at the wrong time can block our view of those unexpected relationships between seemingly random ideas.\u00a0 What if Newton had been too busy with calculation to notice that mythic apple’s fall?\u00a0 Or if Archimedes (the Greek, not the owl<\/a> this time) had been too busy working on the problem of the king’s crown to bother taking a bath?<\/p>\n

My advice:\u00a0 forget trying to be a good little pupil.\u00a0 Rush over to the window of your mind and see what’s going on in the schoolyard.\u00a0 Let’s show some gratitude for the ideas that float around us, unnoticed.\u00a0 And notice a few of them.<\/p>\n

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We’re all about practice, so I’ve spent the past few (very busy) weeks playing with the ideas in my last post:\u00a0 that in the creative process, distractibility might be more valuable than concentrated focus. Since I’ve sometimes tended to see my own darting mind as a bit of a shameful liability, I thought I’d just …<\/p>\n

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