It’s a comforting message for today’s busy knowledge worker switching tasks every 47 seconds that focus doesn’t come naturally to us. In fact, the default mode of the mind is the wandering mind. Think about it: what does your mind do if you sit still? Or walk in the woods? Does it naturally and unconsciously focus on the present moment? No. It starts to wander.
If we have a lot going on, the mind wanders to our to-do list, our worries, our stressors, and possible threats. It’s also very common that these wandering thoughts trigger the so-called “me-chatter” of the mind: I start to think about myself, what I should do, or what others think of me.
But when we really want to focus on the present moment, we need to become aware of the wandering thoughts, shut off the inner chatter, and gently but firmly bring the focus to the present moment.
What in the present moment should we focus on then? Perhaps a report we need to write, a marketing idea we need to come up with, or an ongoing board game with our child or friend.
Scientists often describe attention as a spotlight that we can intentionally direct toward what’s important, for example, the present moment. This attention spotlight can also unintentionally follow internal stimuli, such as a growling stomach when we’re hungry. Or it can be triggered by external stimuli, for example, a cool lilac-colored hat from your favorite brand that you spot on someone walking by. Our conscious mind, or attention, is always filled with something. It’s hard if not impossible to not think about anything, right?
The three neurochemicals in your brain that enable focus
First of all, epinephrine (or adrenaline) is released within your brain and your body. The release of epinephrine increases energy and alertness. There’s no focus without epinephrine, but alone, it’s not sufficient. We need something else as well. The second important and necessary neurochemical is called acetylcholine, which also exists in the brain and body. Within the brain, acetylcholine is involved in memory, motivation, arousal, and attention. This is the neurochemical that allows spotlighting to happen as we just described. So we have alertness, which is epinephrine, and then we have the actual direction in which our concentration and focus are placed, which is accomplished with acetylcholine. In order to have ongoing focus, we need one more neurochemical, dopamine. Dopamine is often associated with pleasure and reward, but it's also the molecule of motivation, drive, and pursuit. Dopamine is a sort of engine that keeps our focus up and running because we don't just want to be focused for a moment, but we want to be able to focus for 10 minutes, for an hour, or maybe even for two hours. Without dopamine, we wouldn’t have any motivation, and without motivation, nothing would happen.
Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman describes the relationship and role of these three neurochemicals by using the metaphor of an arrow. In the focus arrow, acetylcholine is the arrowhead that spotlights the neurons and neurocircuits that need to be more involved. Epinephrine is the arrow shaft, that assures sufficient alertness for focus to happen, and dopamine is the propeller that drives the arrow forward.
Focus and learning
In order for our brain to learn new knowledge or skills, we need attention. From the brain’s perspective, learning consists of three elements: motivation, attention, and memory. Motivation is the “why” behind all behavior. It’s the first step in learning as it orients us to attention. For example, the lilac-colored cap on a passing bypasser appears in your attention spotlight because lilac is the trend color of the season, and you follow trends, and the cap is from your favorite brand. Later on, thanks to motivation and attention, you remember how cool that cap looked and check your go-to second-hand app if there’s anything similar you could get.
Learning is a key part of all knowledge work. If we didn’t learn and constantly acquire new information, robots would’ve already replaced us. Motivation, attention, and memory are the prerequisites for learning. If we lose our ability to concentrate, we don’t learn. If you’re reading this text but after a couple of minutes realize that your mind is wandering somewhere else, you won’t learn the things you just read. You need to reorient your attention back to this text in order to form a memory trace of it.
When discussing the topic of learning and focus, many people bring up their concerns with audiobooks. Even though the emergence of audiobooks has accelerated our consumption of books in a positive way, people have a hard time remembering audiobooks as well as they remember written text from a physical book. You can probably relate to this: if you listen to an audiobook while doing household tasks at home, your attention isn’t strictly on what you hear but on many other things at the same time, meaning that you continuously switch your attention and hinder the possibility of learning. Whereas when reading a physical book, you must concentrate on it only – you can’t do anything at the same time. If, or when, your mind wanders (this happens on average after three minutes), you’ll notice it and bring your attention back to the text (and maybe reread the last few sentences that you didn’t pay attention to). This is something you hardly do when listening to an audiobook.
The more competition there is for our attention, the harder it is to learn and memorize things. This phenomenon is familiar to those of us who find it hard to concentrate in a noisy environment – like an open space office where people talk, walk back and forth, or, worst of all, have a conference call without headphones. Eliminating external distractions for enabling concentration is the first step. Becoming aware of your own wandering mind is the second.
Let’s not forget that even though our brain loves to learn new things to keep it fit and sane, concentration is hard for us: A wandering mind is our mind’s default mode. Concentration may feel unpleasant, boring, and challenging. Sometimes we need to keep our attention on a task for quite a long time before we get the reward of learning something new or solving a complex problem. Learning is intrinsically rewarding for us humans, but it doesn’t come easy. There are no quick pleasures similar to social media posts in learning as learning always requires effort. So if we want to learn and even come up with something innovative, we need to tolerate discomfort, boredom, and the sometimes unpleasant feeling of facing a challenge.
In the first chapter we learned that…
As humans, we have the same animal brain that we had 12,000 years ago when humans lived as hunter-gatherers. Our brains are still more adapted to living on the savannah than in our modern society and lifestyle.
In order for our brain to function properly, we need to pay more attention to our fundamental physiological and psychological needs to lead a healthy life.
The brain isn’t built for knowledge work and resists deep focus. The default mode of the mind is the wandering mind, which we need to learn to master in the ability to concentrate.
Our brain is naturally tuned for anything that is threatening, pleasurable, or novel in our surroundings – and this trait has been vital for our survival. But in our modern world full of distractions, it makes it hard to manage these distractions and concentrate on what’s really important.
Three main neurochemicals are required for the brain to focus: epinephrine, acetylcholine, and dopamine. They play a key role in motivation, attention, and memory, which are prerequisites for learning. Without focus, we don’t learn or remember anything.