The Mind, Explained (2019–…): Season 2, Episode 1 - How to Focus - full transcript

"Perhaps the most difficult thing

that a human being is called upon to face

is long, concentrated thinking."

Those words were written in 1925
by Hugo Gernsback.

He was a prolific inventor

and one of the pioneers
of science fiction.

And distractions
lurked everywhere he looked.

Street noises
filtering through the window,

a door slamming somewhere,

a telephone ring or a doorbell.

So Gernsback invented "the isolator."



A wooden helmet that eliminated
95% of the noise from the outside world,

fitted with two tiny glass windows
for the eyes

and an easily attachable oxygen tube
in case you ever struggled to breathe.

It was an imperfect solution

to a very real problem.

How to focus in the busy modern world.

A hundred years later
and the problem's only gotten worse.

Isolation helmets have given way
to noise-canceling headphones,

digital trackers and blockers,

and a cottage industry
of productivity gurus,

who claim you can hack your way
to optimum mental performance.

But distractions
have gotten more sophisticated too.

And with each passing day,
resistance feels ever more futile.

So what are we supposed to do?



How do we focus?

There's Jack
giving the teacher his best attention.

She knows
that her accuracy, her patience,

and her attention to small detail

are invaluable.

It'll only take... a few minutes.

Because of the Internet and so many,
I wouldn't call them distractions,

but options,
their attention span is a lot shorter.

If you look closely enough,

the spirit of craftsmanship
has not disappeared.

Ambition is the spark plug
of the human engine,

the force that makes things happen.

Do you need a new spark plug?

How well can you focus?

Here's a quick test.

Your task is
to ignore the people in the foreground

and count as precisely as you can

how many times the guy in the back
jumps on the trampoline.

Ready?

Go.

How many jumps did you count?

If you answered 11,

congratulations, that's correct.

But...

...did you see the gorilla

who delicately tiptoed into the frame
and tiptoed out?

The first version of this study was done
in the '90s with a way bigger gorilla,

and around half the people
totally missed it.

Which means that if you are super focused,

you won't notice
what's going on around you.

We often tell ourselves this story

that we're observing
the whole world around us.

But really the world around us is shaped
by what we're paying attention to and we...

You might think
that you can watch this episode

while texting a friend and cooking dinner,

but you can't.

We're not wired to multitask.

Writing an article
while talking on the phone,

while looking at an email inbox,
that is impossible.

The term multitasking
comes from the computer world,

coined in the 1960s

to describe machines that could
simultaneously process two or more jobs.

But most computers can't even do this.

Let's say you have
fouror five differentprograms running.

It's not literally running those programs
at the same time.

It's quickly switching
back and forth between 'em.

But it can do the switch really quickly.

Usually.

And that's also true for our brains.

All the things we want to focus on
are like different programs,

including things in our own minds,
like your to-do list for tomorrow.

You might think you're running
these programs simultaneously,

but really, you're switching between them,

and we aren't as good at it as computers.

It takes our mind a while
to really quit something.

And in that time,
we can't fully focus on anything else.

So the key to focus is to keep
one program, and only one program,

running as long as possible.

Sustained attention,
especially on abstract concepts,

is not something that necessarily
comes very naturally to humans.

Research suggests we can do it
for about 90 minutes at a time.

Human progress, in many ways,
is a story of chasing those brief windows.

To design things and then build them.

To develop medicines and theories,
and write great novels.

In the 1980s, IBM pushed the message

that technology could help us
do all kinds of work more efficiently

so we didn't have to work as much.

IBM never stops searching
for new ways

to make difficult jobs easier,

so people can do more important things,
like go home for dinner.

Daddy!

I used to eat lunch at my desk
at least once a week.

No more.

Naturally, IBM was
one of the first companies

to adopt email.

Instead of wasting time
with phone tag and faxes,

IBM employees
could just fire off a message

which would be received in an instant.

It was a miracle.

Sort of.

Within three or four days,
they melted down the server.

We weren't just replacing
the fax machine with email.

We were doing the communication equivalent

of now suddenly sending
hundreds or thousands of faxes a week.

And once people
could reach each other instantaneously,

we came to expect
an instantaneous response,

setting off a kind of revolution
in how people worked together.

To rapid, back-and-forth,
unscheduled messages.

That pileup.

The little red reminders
that you're more and more behind.

An email thread so long,

following the conversation
is like a trigonometry quiz.

A quiz that is always due immediately.

No one actually thought
this was a good idea.

No one actually planned to do this.

This type of hyper communication
seemed to just arise naturally.

Some of those time management apps

have a pretty intimate window
into the problem,

because they're tracking
how tens of thousands of people

actually spend their time online.

RescueTime reported
that their average user

checks their email or an instant messenger
like Slack every six minutes.

More than a third
do it every three minutes or less.

The issue is
we are checking our inbox all the time

not because of a personal failing of will,

not because of some bad habit,
not because we're addicted.

We check our inbox because
our companies have made it necessary.

And we're social animals.

We're hardwired
to live and work in tribes,

and we'll go to great lengths
to avoid letting them down.

I always think of an email inbox
as what a mad scientist would cook up

if his plot for taking over the world

required him to distract people
as much as possible.

Because what do you see
when you open up an email inbox?

Here's a ambiguous question from your boss
that's gonna be hard to answer.

Here's a scheduling request. You don't
really know what time is gonna work.

Here is an angry colleague. Or it looks
like they're angry based on the text.

You see issue after issue
that you cannot resolve in the moment.

We know it's fine
if we reply later

in our rational minds.

But the deeper part
of our mind says,

"No. There's people who need us
and we are ignoring them."

Facebook discovered
the power of this back in the late 2000s.

Engineers noticed that a lot of people's
comments were versions of, "I like this."

So in 2009, they turned that into a button

and an unexpected thing happened.

People started spending
way more time on Facebook.

By making it so easy to react to a post,

people's posts got more reactions.

Similar buttons exploded
on other social media platforms.

"If I just tap that icon,
I will get that feedback."

That is almost impossible
for the human brain to ignore.

So if I'm a mad scientist again trying
to create the distraction doomsday device,

email and Slack would be my first idea,

and something like Twitter and Facebook
would be my second.

But online, there are also
a lot of productivity gurus fighting back

with techniques
that often sound pretty complicated.

- I'm gonna talk about the 80-20 rule.
- The Pomodoro Technique.

The block schedule system.
It's gonna blow your mind.

- Insert friction points.
- Eat that frog.

But behind that jargon,

most of the tips
boil down to just a few simple ideas.

like creating structure around your day

so you can spend less time
thinking about what you should be doing

and more time just doing,

taking regular breaks
to renew your energy,

and what gurus call...

- Batching.
- Batch.

Batch email.

Which just means checking
your email a couple of times a day

instead of every couple of minutes.

And while studies show this can
make people a bit more productive,

if you're a more neurotic person,
it can actually make you more stressed.

These tips haven't magically solved
the problems we have with staying focused.

The problem is deeper than that.

And according to some news reports,

the real issue is that our attention spans
are now fundamentally damaged.

Humans now have
a shorter attention span than goldfish.

The attention span of about a goldfish.

Which have a nine-second attention span.
We have eight.

We're going the wrong way.

But if you actually look
for the source of that claim,

you'd be hard-pressed to find
any research that backs that up.

And we've heard versions
of this panic before.

When TV took off,
people worried it would rot our brains.

Decades earlier, similar things
were said about the radio.

And centuries before that,

there was an outcry over books
pumped out by newfangled printing presses,

only to distract and abuse
the weaker judgments of scholars.

We may be more distracted now,
but that's a hard thing to measure.

Researchers consider working memory
capacity one proxy for attention,

and that's been stable since the '90s,
long before smartphones.

In fact, scientists have struggled
to find any evidence

that our ability to pay attention
has changed, going back to the late 1800s.

It's not that our minds have been weakened
by our phones or TVs

or, God forbid, books.

While those things might be distractions,
they actually aren't the biggest one.

It's your mind itself.

Which is something
even an isolator can't fix.

When Hugo Gernsback
introduced his device to the world,

he admitted as much.

"Even if supreme quiet reigns,

you are your own disturber
practically 50% of the time."

Nearly a century later,
studies proved him right.

Almost half of our interruptions
are self-initiated.

Wewant to be pulled out
of whatever our present moment is.

We might feel, on any given day,
insecure or anxious or frightened.

There's this desire
to escape it and to change it.

The big difference today
is that it's never been easier.

Technology is a distraction,

but mainly because
it helps us distract ourselves.

And then
the anxiety circuitry in turn

makes it even worse to focus,
and you get this vicious cycle occurring.

The right way to diagnose
what's going on right now

is not that we have
lost our ability to focus,

but instead, that we're out of practice.

Out of practice
at feeling that urge to do something else

and resisting it.

Like a runner
breaking through the wall,

it dissipates and your attention remains.

The difference is
you need to sit still.

Focusing on something simple
like your breath

and gently returning to it
when your mind begins to wander

makes you more aware
of your thoughts and feelings

without getting overwhelmed by them

and helps you relax.

Meditation has also taken off
in Western countries

because it's like boot camp
for your attention.

So when you get
those urges to distract yourself,

you have stronger muscles
to pull yourself back in.

But instead of strengthening
those muscles,

a lot of people have been opting
for a different approach.

Getting rid of the urges.

I was a freshman in college
and I had an essay due the next day

on a book I hadn't even read.

And I went to a friend's dorm room

just to kind of innocently complain
about the assignment,

and she said,

"Try an Adderall."

And I took this blue pill,
and the night was a revelation.

I was up all night, I was reading. I was...

You know, I felt
utterly absorbed in the text.

I felt like I was writing brilliantly,
like ideas were just pouring out of me.

And I finished the essay, I turned it in,

and that began a very long,

very complicated relationship
with this drug.

Adderall is an amphetamine
designed to treat ADHD and narcolepsy.

It works by boosting activity
of two chemicals in the brain.

Norepinephrine,

which makes us feel alert.

And dopamine,
which motivates us to seek rewards.

Combined, these chemicals can make it
easier to concentrate for longer

and feel good doing it.

At least at first.

But there's a lot we don't know

about the long-term effects
of taking these kinds of stimulants.

I always tell people

that I am prescribing something
that we only understand very little

and that there is a risk
in taking these medications.

We do know that elevated
norepinephrine can hurt your sleep,

wearing you down over time.

And those doses of dopamine
can become addictive.

It leaves you,
when you're not on this substance,

in this under-stimulated state

where you're trying to feel as good as you
used to be able to feel without the drug,

but you can't.

You have to ask yourself,
"Is there a dependence on the medication?"

Not just a physiologic dependence,
but an actual psychological dependence.

And is it possible
that we are robbing people of their agency

when we say, "Just take this.
It'll make you feel better."

You think,
"Wait, I can't just quit my life."

"I can't just quit my job."

You know, "I need this substance
in order to perform."

There is
a particular kind of job

where, anecdotally,
people show a remarkable level of focus.

Doing skilled work with your hands.

There's a lot of explanations for this,

but one of those explanations is that it
actually gives us a framework of values.

There's a clear difference
between a good wooden table

and a bad wooden table,

a professional's ceramic bowl
and an amateur's.

There's a goal to measure up to.

Smoother, bigger,

or tinier.

In 2013, this set
the Guinness World Record

for the smallest statue
ever created by the human hand.

A golden motorcycle
inside a hollowed-out human hair,

that the artist plucked
from his own beard stubble.

Everything I do,

I always try to beat what I did last time.

So in 2017, he did.

That's a sculpture of a human embryo

approximately the size
of a human blood cell.

Wigan has also put the moon landing
in the eye of a needle,

coronated a pinhead
with a glittering queen's crown,

and recreated Vermeer's masterpiece
The Girl with a Pearl Earring

smaller than the tip of a matchstick.

You're going into this world
where you are trying to control

external forces.

See, you have this thing
called surface tension.

You have, um, static electricity.

He has to work
in perfect stillness.

His sculptures are so tiny and fragile,

his own heartbeat
is enough to obliterate them.

So I have to work
in between the heartbeats.

When the heart stops, I move.
So it's like, one, then I move.

Then I move.

Then I move.

Then I move.

If the world is divided
into people who see the gorilla

and people who don't see the gorilla...

Did you see the gorilla
in the video?

No.

...Wigan is
in the exact camp you'd expect.

I don't get pleasure doing it.

There is no pleasure.

Only when I finish.

It's what happens to people's minds
when they see my work. You hear them go...

"Wow, it's amazing!"

There's my pleasure right there.
That's my pleasure.

A huge part of focus
is motivation.

An internal drive
to achieve some kind of reward.

Technology means we always have
quick rewards at our fingertips.

So if you're going to have
any chance of resisting them...

You have to know
what you want to do instead.

That takes reflection, experimentation,
and time, and it's uncomfortable.

In the past,
the answer to these questions

may have been more readily offered
by your religion

or your family and community.

There were clearer obligations.

And fewer choices.

I'm so aware
of how precious my attention is.

I ask myself constantly,
when I pick up any given article or book,

"Wait, what is this gonna do for me?"

"Is this how I should spend my attention?"

In a sense, I think distraction
is a way of avoiding existential anxiety.

Kirkegaard said that anxiety
is the dizziness of freedom.

And I think humans are fundamentally
pretty ambivalent about being free.

On the one hand, we say,
"I want to be free,"

but when we're free,
it feels, metaphorically,

like we don't have gravity.

As a result, a lot of people build
these balls and chains into their lives

so that they don't
experience this freedom.

In our zealous efforts
to optimize our time,

to work better, harder, faster,

we risk losing sight
of what it is we're trying to accomplish.

Remember, working less
was once a sales pitch,

but email ended up
bringing work into our homes.

France even passed
a new labor law about it

and other countries
are considering the same.

And cramming more tasks
into a giant, color-coded schedule

won't change the biological fact
that our ability to focus ebbs and flows.

And the more tasks you switch between,
the more your mind slows down.

Are you still paying attention
to this episode?

Did you see this gorilla?

Or this one?

Or the one right here?

Did you see the gorilla
in the video?

No.

The only time I really felt burnt out

was when I was just so deep
in my addiction to Adderall,

because it made my life so single-minded.

I was just so obsessed
with the writing I was trying to do.

I had written a first or second draft
of my first book,

but the manuscript
was so incoherent that, um,

I wound up losing the book contract.

I finally had clarity
that Adderall is not helping me.

It had actually become a profound obstacle
in the way of success.

Focusing is always a trade-off.

You get the power to accomplish something

in exchange for blindness
to the wider world.

You actually need to have
unfocused times as well

so that you can begin to connect
with more subtle elements of who you are.

I was the one that would fail in school.

I suppose I had to explore me.

I had to find
something else in me that I'd lost.

And I found me in this world.

And I think that it's...

that that's actually
one of life's great challenges,

is like, ultimately, where do we want
our attention to go?

And it's difficult to solve that riddle.

Because the answer changes

depending on the day, or the week,
or that point in your life.

Our minds don't actually
work like computers.

It's an infinitely more complex system

that can't be optimized for efficiency
with a handful of bug fixes.

So when you find yourself
struggling to count the jumps,

it's worth pausing to ask yourself,
"Why are you counting them?"

Maybe look around

and notice more of the gorillas
that go by.