Engagement

VI: Engagement
Today I am already distracted as I sit down because I’m hungry. I’m munching on dried mangoes and the remains of a scone, and this does divide my attention. It’s amazing how many ways we can multitask without even thinking of it as multitasking, like eating while doing absolutely anything else. Life is already full enough of distractions, just in dealing with the basics like eating and peeing and thermoregulating and hydrating and answering your mom’s phone calls. No wonder all this other stuff has us out of our heads.

But there are a few key differences between the distractions we’ve been coping with for eons and the ones we find ourselves facing in the 21st century. For one thing, the kind of multitasking involved in something simple like knitting and talking at the same time doesn’t tax your brains ability to process information, because this combination doesn’t use overlapping channels. Each task uses pretty much only one channel, and if you’re good enough at both that you don’t have to be actively learning while you do them, you’re set. But being good it both is important, because, as Anderson explains, “when forced to multitask, the overloaded brain shifts its processing from the hippocampus (responsible for memory) to the striatum (responsible for rote tasks), making it hard to learn a task or even recall what you’ve been doing once you’re done.” That’s just fine if you’re folding laundry, but if you’re trying to do something challenging? What if you’re trying to grow as a person?

Here we find another key difference between past and present. Our environments once promoted aimless zoning out, but now they tend to prevent it. Melville described the danger of his tendency to slip into states of so-called distraction while he was high up in the crow’s nest on a ship’s mast, working as a look-out. This got him into trouble more than once, apparently, but it didn’t pose the same kind of threat as it would have if he had instead been incessantly tweeting. Failing to notice a blowing whale might have gotten him a physical beating, but in a mental sense his daydreaming was more positive than negative. That’s because letting your mind wander is not the same thing as functioning in a state of consistent distraction. What happens when your mind wanders, actually, is kind of the opposite of what happens when you skip distractedly from topic to topic.

God, another cigarette. Benji’s standing right next to me with the thing dangling between his fingers, so that smoke roils right up and over to me. But I’m not reacting. I’ve logged it and sent it away. I refuse to care. And luckily, he’s walking away now so I didn’t have to put my Zen powers into practice for very long. Then there’s a shop-vac going and now somebody’s listening to a Ted Talk. Or Radiohead? There’s definitely an electronic voice happening. I can’t make sense of it. Why am I trying? It’s across the room. But boy, is it hard to block out. It’s totally arrhythmic. There’s no groove to slip into. The tempo keeps changing and throwing me off. Now somebody in the other room is playing drums. Drums. I didn’t even know there was a drum set in this building. Luckily whoever is practicing is pretty good and apparently in a mellow mood. It’s a chill, jazzy sort of beat he’s got going, although with a lot of cymbal, and that’s a bit difficult.

Then I notice something extraordinary has happened: It’s quiet in here. I only hear the sound of a blowing fan and a robin singing. It’s so amazing I have to stop writing for a moment and soak it in. Am I genuinely distracted by silence? I guess the answer is no, because it didn’t pull me away from what I was doing. Instead it allowed me to float away, until Sean started using a staple gun.

In order to be creative, we have to float around some. We have to let our minds drift. When we zone out, says a 2009 Discover magazine article, both our cognitive and emotional neural networks are activated at the same time. When this happens, the mind is thinking and feeling in that low-grade way that has led to some of history’s most famous “Eureka!” moments. Zoning out gives networks the chance to communicate with one another in ways that don’t happen when we’re engaged in focused tasks. When they do, there’s a potential for putting the pieces together in a new way.

I think an important concept to note here is the relationship between distraction and engagement. Distraction pretty nearly means disengagement, but what you’re disengaged from—and whether it’s because you’re engaged with something else—makes all the difference. If you’re disengaged from what you should be doing because you’re engaged in something fulfilling, that’s good for your mind even if it’s not good for your survival. If you’re disengaged from what you should be doing because you’re zoning out, and therefore your mind is engaged with itself in a healthy way, that’s fine too.

But if you’re disengaged from what you should be doing because you’re skimming or jumping from subject to subject or task to task, and therefore basically disengaged from everything, that’s what we’re all trying to figure out how to avoid. Likewise, if you’re disengaged from what you should be doing because you’re engaged with something that inherently doesn’t allow deep engagement but instead requires a shallow, addictive sort of relationship, you probably should avoid that too.