Filtering Out Distractions
Let's continue with the comparison of doing well in school and watching TV. To pay attention to TV, you hav to keep your eyes on the screen. In school, if your attentionis ging to work right, it must filter out all kinds of noise and distraction. Many machines have filters in them. Air conditioners contain filters to remove dust from the air. There are filters in a car that keep the gasoline and oil clean. Chemists use filters to purify chemicals. People use filters to make coffee. That way they can drink a pure liquid with out having to taste the coffee grounds. You can think about your brain in the same way. You can imagine that your brain also has filters to help you clean out distractions. Distractions are sounds, sights, or ideas that are unimportant or have nothing to do with the important thing going on at the moment.
Here are some of the distractions you have to filter out.
1. Unimportant things you can see. There is no use in looking out the window when you're supposed to be reading.
2. Unimportant sounds you can hear. It's a waste of time to listen to an air conditioner when a teacher is explaining your homework assigment to you.
3. Your Body. You can't keep thinking about how you look, about how you feel, or about how little body sensations such as the ichy feeling of a wool sweater against the back of your neck.
4. Daydreams. You can miss a lot if your imagination carries you away from reality. Somehow, you have to be able to filter out your daydreams most of the time in school, even though you think up some good ideas and exciting possiblilities while you're daydreaming.
5. Thoughts about the future. If you should be concentrating on the present, you can't be thinking about the coming afternoon or night or weekend. To pay attention to the present, you have to filter out the future (at least for the moment).
6. Things you want. We all have needs and wants. Some of them have no connection with what we're doing at the moment. Concentrating too much or too often on such wants makes it hard to focus on anything else. If you keep thinking about chocolate or about a new game or some clothes you'd like to buy, you will find it hard to stay tuned in when there are important ideas to understand in class.
7. Other kids. Fellow students are sometimes the hardest things to filter out! In a classroom, they surround you. it's almost impossible to ignore them completely. But, for at least some of the time, you need to filter them out so that you can read a book, listen to the teacher, or think about your work.
You don't need to filter out all of these seven kinds of distractions all the time. You need to pay some attention at certain times to friends, to the future, to the things you want, to sights, to sounds, to your body, and to your original ideas. There are event imes when it's good to daydream. You can come up with some excellent ideas when you let your mind wander off. There are also times when it's good to gaze all around you at interesting things. A lot of artists are good at noticing things other people miss. It's really a matter of how you divide up your attetion and when you concentrate on what. When your attention is working properly, your "filters" are adjusted just right. They know exactly how much distraction to let in.
So, we have talked about two important controls over attention: choosing the most important thing to concentrate on and filtering out the unimportant things. These controls affect information coming into the brain. but there is another kind of concentration that is just as important; it is called reflecting or planning.
We will talk about
reflecting or planning on Wednesday. Please feel free to share your insights, knowledge and suggestions.
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