I was thrilled to read the riveting “In Defense of Distraction” piece by Sam Anderson in New York magazine this week. Well-surveyed, it covers a lot of different aspects of this complex topic without being overly academic or boring. In fact, and this is the biggest compliment I can possibly give, the article is full of distractions – digressing thoughts that open up unexpected avenues of pleasure for the reader.
Yet the distraction is “focused,” as Anderson would put it. We learn that Proust’s À la Recherche du Temps Perdu is not so much the Anti-Twitter as you might think, and that distraction is a requirement for creativity: “This sort of free-associative wandering is essential to the creative process; one moment of judicious unmindfulness can inspire thousands of hours of mindfulness.”And we hear about William James’ “dot experiment,” which led him to assert “that the human mind can’t actually focus on the dot, or any unchanging object, for more than a few seconds at a time: It’s too hungry for variety, surprise, the adventure of the unknown.” Anderson: “This is what the web-threatened punditry often fails to recognize: Focus is a paradox—it has distraction built into it. The two are symbiotic; they’re the systole and diastole of consciousness. Attention comes from the Latin ‘to stretch out’ or ‘reach toward,’ distraction from ‘to pull apart.’ We need both. In their extreme forms, focus and attention may even circle back around and bleed into one other. (…) The truly wise mind will harness, rather than abandon, the power of distraction.”
Exactly! As I’m trying to devote my attention exclusively to one single task – writing an article – for an entire week, I suddenly realize that the absence of distraction equals some kind of mental imprisonment. If you’re not allowed to desert a given task for at least a few moments of aimless meandering through competing attention-grabbing events, you’re deprived of the fundamental dignity of responding to social stimuli. I want to be able to think and look left and right of the "center of attention." I want to be a floating topic and browse through a pool of ever-present options.
Distraction is a human right!
Thanks Tim. Now I can validate what i do all day.
Posted by: Jody | June 13, 2009 at 05:40 AM
Cogito ergo sum!
Posted by: Tim Leberecht | June 07, 2009 at 11:08 PM
Wow, this post brought me back to my Cognitive Science days at Cal...love it! I love reading about human attention, memory, etc...thanks.
Posted by: Mrs. Howard | June 07, 2009 at 10:16 PM