THE ART AND SCIENCE OF LOOKING UP REPORT

Distraction kills abstraction.
The average consistent estimate of how much our
attention span has shortened is by around one third
over the last fifteen years.
Understanding how we create habits is critical to how we live, learn and make
better choices.
Simply put, the brain loves patterns, and so the more we do something in a
certain way, the more often we repeat the pattern, the better the brain learns
it and the more strongly a habit is formed.
With attention we can change habits – by doing things differently and sticking
at it, our wonderful plastic brains can also change the pattern and incorporate
the new one. The important element here is willpower – we need the stickability
to keep at it until a new behaviour becomes the norm. Willpower takes effort,
but like a muscle the more we use it the stronger it gets and the more effort we
train our brain to make.
We can also increase our attention span by minimising distractions – switching
off alerts or making a list to clear our mind of unimportant decisions as
these take as much cognitive effort as decisions relevant to task performance.
Instead, we are freed up to immerse ourselves in the ever-more abstractive
practice of looking up... and daydreaming.
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