 If I showed up to a costume party as a half-man, half-horse, would I be the centaur of attention? Here. It's not an easy task I'm setting before you here. This is a six-minute video with lots of information and few breaks, and it's embedded in a website that's absolutely designed for your eyes to wander to something that looks interesting and click on it instead of paying attention. And you are paying. They don't call it the attention economy for nothing. Your focus and your engagement are worth big bucks. Attention is an extraordinarily important part of cognition, on par with thought. After all, if the world doesn't register in your brain for processing, it doesn't matter how smart you are, you might as well be a vegetable. But, as with most things neurological, it turns out to be extraordinarily complex. All sorts of different mental processes contribute to attention, from fundamental survival instincts to motivation to fatigue to mood. Like, do you remember from back in episode 41 how anger actually enhances logical thinking? Well, it turns out that being angry or afraid actually allows you to pay more attention than you usually would, to certain things. Also, attention has both an intensity and a direction, and it's easy to mistake one for the other. You've heard it called attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, but there's a lot of research that shows that the deficit might not be in attention, per se. It's in the ability to consciously direct it. Some people with ADHD don't just space out and not focus on anything. They actually focus very intensely on one thing after another because they don't have conscious control of it the way that other people do. It's kind of like an untethered fire hose. But, given something with some sort of instantaneous feedback, like video games or training for an Olympic swim meet, some people with ADHD can focus intently for hours upon hours, way past the point that the rest of us would get bored and check Facebook. So, attention in psychological processes is seriously important, but really complicated. It's perhaps unsurprising that this relationship to productivity is similarly complicated. That sometimes the problem isn't too little attention, but too much. If you read XKCD, and you should, you're probably familiar with the term nerd sniping. It's a familiar problem for many of us. Give us an interesting and challenging problem and our brains sort of lose track of the rest of the world. Sometimes those problems are important and need good answers. But sometimes, like after typing up a report at work, instead of just saving it and sending it, I might start playing around with the formatting a little bit to try and make it look nicer, maybe adjusting the font or the paragraph spacing. Two hours later, when I wake up, I've got about 20 tabs of Wikipedia open in my browser about typesetting and a couple of pages of hand calculations on my desk while I'm wondering just how many decimal points the line spacing dialogue box and Microsoft Word can handle. Nerd sniping probably happens due to different psychological processes than ADHD, but it's still fundamentally a problem of attention and it can have serious impact. Losing track of the scope and context of some part of a problem can be just as bad as not working on it at all. On the other hand, Professor Mihai, or Mike, Chikset Mihai, has done a lot of really interesting research about the productive side of that sort of hyper-focused phenomenon. What he's termed flow. Now, flow is frequently appropriated by new-agey self-help book authors, people Mike refers to as the happy-face people, as a sort of justification for all sorts of crazy stuff that's not supported by research. But, as presented by Mike, flow is an empirically compelling framework for thinking about the psychology of being in the zone, a sort of intersection between intense focus and productivity. According to Chikset Mihai, there's a special state of human consciousness called flow where the world sort of drops away and the execution of a particular task becomes the sole focus of a person's entire attention, very much like a nerd sniping trance. Some of the indicators of flow include a loss of self-awareness, a loss of time-awareness, and a sensation that the task is somehow performing itself. A person who's in the zone might feel as though they've become a conduit for the activity, whether it's writing poetry or sinking free throws. Chikset Mihai has also suggested that finding an activity with which one can achieve flow is a powerful force for personal growth and happiness. He's advocated for businesses and educational institutions to foster environments that are conducive to being in the zone, to get the absolute best work out of people instead of just generic productivity. I can only assume that Google, Pixar, and IDEO continue to snicker quietly to themselves while doing precisely that. Flow sounds great, and the people who experience it say that it's a fantastic, rapturous feeling, but Mike has acknowledged that there is a potential dark side to losing yourself in your work. If you've ever read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, you probably understand the severity of what it means to be in the zone if you don't know where you're going. Flow can be great for feeling good and getting stuff done, but exactly what you're getting done, that's another thing entirely. I mean, some of the scientists who were very excited to be working on the Manhattan Project got a rude awakening at the Trinity test of the first atomic bomb. Solving the riddle of atomic energy was exciting, challenging, and rewarding work, but the reality of that mushroom cloud? Not so fun for everybody. The common thread through all these problems with attention is a lack of mindfulness, the awareness of where you're choosing, or not choosing, to focus. Whether you're single-mindedly trying to infuse an inanimate corpse with life, or browsing your way through Wikipedia instead of writing a thunk script, being conscious of where your attention is can at least give you the opportunity to decide if that's really what you want. And, although meditation has proven benefits for attention, you don't have to become some sort of Tibetan monk to practice mindfulness. Nerdsniping is a real problem for me, so I have a 20-minute timer set up on my work computer so that I don't obsess over something insignificant. Also, practicing directing your attention in everyday life, whether it's in conversations or on the internet, can make it easier to get into the zone when you find something that really is worthy of your full consciousness. There's a lot of research that shows the more you exercise control over your attention, the stronger it gets, and trust me, some people love to have your undivided attention. Have you ever been caught by nerdsniping? What sort of activities do you lose yourself in? Did you get through the entire video without checking Facebook? Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to blah, blah, subscribe, blah, share, and don't stop thunking.