Attention Training

Can you train someone to pay attention? If so, at what age do we stop being able to be trained?

We often boast about our ability to multi-task thus paying attention to a multitude of influences and stimulus.

But cognitive brain research shows that multitasking can in fact be a waste of time.

Is multitasking effective or just an illusion? Who is to decide? Multitasking is something I feel I do very well but at what expense. I find myself being distracted and wanting to pay attention to multiple activities at a time. I know when I choose to focus on the task at hand, I do much better. In one of my recent grad school classes, we discussed "Flow" in reference to our creative ability.

Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields

I know when I get in the state of flow, I almost become trance like and focused like a laser, not to mention this is the time when I am at my best. Why then do I allow or continue to multitask?

Do I have ADD? Makes me wonder sometimes. Or am I afraid I am going to miss something. If I am honest with myself, I believe it is a little of both.

Today I ran across an article at Boston.com that tickled my personal and professional thoughts. Can we train someone to pay attention? If so, why don't I train myself and more importantly why aren't we teaching this in schools? As a professional educator, I notice my students have great difficulty getting on task and staying on task for extended periods of time. Would attention training help improve my students in my class?

The ability to pay careful attention isn't important just for students and air traffic controllers. Researchers are finding that attention is crucial to a host of other, sometimes surprising, life skills: the ability to sort through conflicting evidence, to connect more deeply with other people, and even to develop a conscience. Boston.com

This evidence and new research is exciting to me as a teacher, parent and learner. Bring it on!

This research is in the infancy stage but it has promising discoveries. I believe it is so exciting to know that we have some proof that we can work on this aspect.

My big question for myself is, Does my multitasking help me or distract me? With all the new tools such as the Twitter, UStream, Plurk, etc. will my multitasking get more efficient or much more distracted? I am enjoying the social staff development from reading so many different blogs, twitter posts and social conversations. Interesting ideas such as Dr. Scott McCleod's 140 word book review, Google's advice for student to major in learning or David Jakes 15 minute Staff Development. would never made it across my learning space if not for this social network.