I'm someone who is very easily distracted by the latest text or e-mail notification on my phone.
My iPhone tells me that I spend 6 and a half hours on my phone in screen time every day.
But I know I'm not alone, and I know that so many people seek out distractions around me. And distractions are generally deemed negatively for their derailing us from our primary tasks.
Yes, it's true that distractions can derail us from our hustle, productivity, and work, but distractions can also be used for good, according to Nir Eyal of Psychology Today.
At the core of what makes us so easily distracted is biological limitations in the human mind to focus on a given task. Eyal describes how distractions can be used to reduce the impact of painful and negative experiences, and I know this is true because I use phones to distract myself from painful or negative experiences. An awkward conversation? I'll usually go on my phone. A boring lecture? That's more the reason to go onto my phone.
In my mind, it's not my fault that phones and likeminded distractions are so addicting that they don't allow us to be engaged with what we're supposed to focus on. Rather, it's the fault of either lectures, conversations, and society in general of not being able to keep up with the enthralling nature of distractions.
Distractions are a symptom rather than a problem itself. As an inner-city teacher, when I see a whole classroom of my kids in my classroom on their phones rather than engaged with what I'm talking about in All Quiet on the Western Front or the American Revolution, that's much more of an indictment on how woefully engaging my lesson is than on the aptitude of students themselves. It hurts me, but it also means I have to adapt. Being easily distracted is a sign that, obviously, what's going on right now is not capturing your attention and you'd rather be somewhere else.
Even Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, wasn't a big fan of multitasking. Sophie Leroy, in a journal article to Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, supported the fact that we are more efficient when we are focused on a singular task rather than multiple.
But Bell soon realized, according to David Robson of BBC, that laser-sharp focus actually takes away from our creativity. "A distraction could actually boost your chances of finding a truly novel solution to your problem," Robson tells us. The cons of laser sharp focus is that sometimes, we can get too fixated on one single solution and try to hammer that solution until it works.
Albert Einstein, however, once told us that "insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." In psychology, cognitive fixation is a phenomenon where we try to hammer in the first ideas we thought of rather than trying something different.
Jackson Lu of MIT actually found that multitasked rats were more creative and able to produce more ideas than focused rats. We have all been in collaborative meetings where we had no ideas for what to do and have had to give input and feedback to each others' projects. I have been in these meetings where someone else's feedback and input gave me a new idea that I'd never thought of, that changed around the quality of my classroom and instruction more than I ever could have myself. The oft-ridiculed cliche that "it takes a village" is so true in the settings I work in: community and collaboration help far more in taking care of and teaching a child than a single individual can themselves.
But working in a group and collaborative setting isn't always productive. It isn't always efficient. And it can be seen as a waste of time and distraction with everyone giving different ideas rather than helping someone with their own problems. In groups, however, multitasking has been shown to give more dynamic flexibility to that group setting.
Above all, distractions give us a much-needed break that we need to give ourselves a fresh start and refresh our approach. Dr. Jane McGonigal even states that the cognitive demands of some distractions, like games, give us a break from arduous work and help us develop our ability to build courage, confidence, and take on challenges in the future.
As such, distractions help us reduce stress, and less stress results in a greater ability to keep going, be creative, and cope with pain. McGonigal cites a study where kids were grouped into three categories before surgery to assess anxiety: a control group, a group given anti-anxiety medication before surgery, and a group playing handheld video games. The video game group was the only one to have a statistically significantly lower level of anxiety pre-surgery, and the researchers hypothesized that being distracted was the fundamental reason why. Even during acute burn wound healing, a group playing an immersive virtual reality game experienced 50% less pain than a group not playing the game.
So the line is a thin wire between distractions as a positive or negative force. Where they fall is how they're used. According to McGonigal, it matters whether a distraction is self-suppressing or self-expanding. People must use distractions to expand themselves rather than suppress themselves, and while this can be hard to identify in reality, we must ask ourselves "why am I doing this?" when we are distracted. A self-expanding distraction helps us build strength, while a self-suppressing distraction is for avoiding pain. While coping with pain using distractions is an effective short-term solution, it is just that: a short-term band-aid that wasn't meant to be the end-all-be-all. It is a bridge to a longer-term coping mechanism to allow us to move forward.
So we need to change our narrative around distractions, because we need to wake up and realize that distractions aren't a waste of time, but symptoms of larger problems and coping mechanisms. Distractions can be a very good thing, and we need to start using them as a positive tool for change.