3 Rules for Deeper Thinking

How often do you feel distracted? Better yet, how often do you feel like the day has flown by and somehow you’ve lost time?

If you’re like me (and most Americans), it happens pretty often. We’ve all pretty much entered the attention Thunderdome. There’s an ad for something plastered on every surface. We have tailored ads literally following us around online. And you’re most likely carrying a smartphone with you right now, a device designed to leverage your attention in bits and pieces.

Those smartphones are windows to the world, but we overwhelmingly use them to engage in pleasure-seeking behavior (probably to no one’s surprise).

So how can you better control your attention and put your brain to work on deeper thoughts?

This probably seems obvious after the intro we just went through, but the first step to keeping your brain on task is seeking situations where you’re less likely to have constant demands for your attention.

We like to think of our conscious mind as a kind of Ringleader for that thought circus, cracking the whip to bring the actors into line. But for anyone whose mind has every wandered or has flashed back to an embarrassing moment in the third grade, you know that isn’t really true. Our thoughts are powerful actors, and we usually don’t have direct control of them.

There are a million ways to get started with a mindfulness practice, but the simplest is to practice paying attention. Sit in a quiet place and feel the air against your skin. Feel your weight on the chair. Count your breaths. Purposefully pay attention in that moment and notice everything you can. Don’t worry about the future or past, just notice the now. When your mind wanders, bring it back.

It sounds so easy, but for many of us, it’ll feel like pulling teeth the first few times. The desire to pick up the smartphone or worry about an upcoming meeting can feel almost painful. It’s only through regular practice that we can grow our attention muscle and regain our focus.

I know boredom sounds like something to be avoided. Most of us are surrounded with tools to prevent boredom — phones, TVs, and computers. But the drive to always be distracted or always be with others is proving to be too much of a good thing.

Make a habit of putting yourself in situations to be bored. Don’t make plans for distraction. Don’t cut the time short. Give yourself time to be alone with your own thoughts and see what happens.

If you look back even a hundred years, the worlds of education and intellectual life were very different. Kids memorized long, complex stories and poems in school. Public intellectuals would travel the country reciting memorized speeches about issues of the day, and locals would sit for hours and listen.

Can you imagine that happening today? Most of us can’t get through a television show without checking our phones, and I can hardly remember the last thing I memorized. No doubt technology has made a lot of new things possible, but we’ve lost something along the way.

Purposefully taking control of our attention can help make us more creative, calmer and better at time management. We just have to make a decision about the value of our times and attention.

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