What If Our Tendency To Get Distracted Is Actually A Superpower?

We live in an age of distraction. The average office worker checks their email inbox 77 times a day. Our phones have become distraction machines. We go down internet rabbit holes, chasing links like a kitten in a swarm of butterflies. We switch tasks hundreds of times a day, which is what is really happening when we think we are multi-tasking, a human impossibility according to cognitive psychologists.

We bemoan distraction. There is a knee-jerk, nearly universal idea that distraction is a negative thing, that if we can only stay focused we will be successful. One of the most frequent complaints from teachers in standard schools is how easily their students are distracted and they go to great, almost inhuman, lengths to command undivided attention. There are some teachers who insist that the children's eyes be on them at all times while they are talking. Chit-chat and note passing are strictly forbidden. It's not an accident that desks are arranged in rows, facing forward as if they are on some sort of conveyance rushing them somewhere. Of course phones are forbidden. Even staring out the window is worthy of punishment. ADHD is a diagnosis of our time with millions of children being medicated so that they are better able to focus on the tasks upon which their teachers want them focused.

It makes one wonder, however, if distraction is so universal maybe it is evolutionarily adaptive. I mean, we all struggle with it. The common wisdom is to blame the world for our distractibility, but the truth is that even when we aren't being distracted by work or technology, we distract ourselves with our own emotions like boredom or worry or guilt. Researchers find that our "window of consciousness," that period of time during which we can hold a thought or work out a problem is open for about seven seconds before it closes and we move on to attending to something else. Of course, we may cycle back to these thoughts and problems over and over again, but in between we are distracted by all manner of things both external and internal, and maybe that's not a bad thing.

Maybe the real challenge of our time is to learn to embrace, or rather re-embrace, this human tendency to distraction. Distractibility doesn't show up as a problem in a play-based preschool because the whole point is for children to chose, from moment-to-moment what to focus on. There is nothing to be distracted from except one's own, self-selected pursuits. Intriguingly, researchers have found through experiment that the "inclusion of a person with ADHD greatly improved the problem-solving ability of groups, even though it led to more off-task behavior." To me this suggests that distractibility, rather than being a problem, can actually be a superpower.

We tend to think of distraction as something that takes us off-task, but maybe it would be healthier, and more human, to think of it as taking a bit of a break, a breather to collect ourselves and allow our thoughts and feelings to settle a bit. In that experiment, the ADHD kids were, as predicted, less cooperative and prone to engaging in off-task behaviors, yet their presence improved group performance. Maybe that's because they offered their teammates, and themselves, the opportunities they needed for distraction.

In mathematics, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. In real life, however, straight lines are purely theoretical. Even the straightest of straight-edges are flawed. Humans are not machines and learning is not manufactured on an assembly-line. We don't think in straight lines and never have. Human thought is a process of fits, starts, and exploring rabbit holes. We live in an age of distraction and maybe in this regard it means that this is the most human age ever.

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"I recommend these books to everyone concerned with children and the future of humanity." ~Peter Gray, Ph.D. If you want to see what Dr. Gray is talking about you can find Teacher Tom's First Book and Teacher Tom's Second Book right here. 

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