In this episode of Dharma Lab, Dr. Cortland Dahl and Dr. Richard Davidson explore why attention feels harder to control than it used to, how modern technology exploits basic mechanisms in the brain, and what we can do to regain more choice over where our attention goes. They discuss why we may be more distracted than we were 50 years ago, how novelty and emotion capture attention, and why simple acts of intentionality can function like reps for the brain. Enjoy!
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In This Episode:
00:00 Taking Back Control of Attention
01:21 Why Focus Feels So Hard
02:51 Are We More Distracted Than 50 Years Ago?
05:15 Why the Brain Is Wired for Distraction
09:03 How Our Attention Gets Hijacked
13:20 Why Surprise Captures the Brain
16:35 The Reinforcement Loop Behind Endless Scrolling
17:44 How Emotion Disrupts Self-Control
21:24 Rebuilding Control Over Attention
25:53 Attention as a Practice of Intention
29:46 Digital Hygiene: Designing Your Environment for Focus
Written transcript for those who prefer to read:
00:00 — Taking Back Control of Attention
Richie: Now we have basically ceded control to the forces around us, and it has led to a kind of impairment, a collective impairment in prefrontal function that we’re all suffering from. There are data to suggest that we are indeed more distracted today than we were 50 years ago. It’s not just a kind of subjective impression.
Cort: I would say if there’s one word that captures the heart of this as a practice, I would say intention. And simply being intentional about what’s going on with my attention. Just choose. Before your mind gets pulled somewhere, I just got an alert. I’m going to choose to do that. And I noticed the pull, but I’m going to actually ask myself, do I want to check this message right now? Or I just heard a sound. I’m going to actually choose. Do I want to keep my attention with what I’m doing? Or do I want to You know, turn and look to see what was happening over there, like actually just making a choice. Like you were saying, the reps, you can do a thousand of those a day easily.
01:21 — Why Focus Feels So Hard
Cort: Welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I am Cortland Dahl, one of the co-hosts here, and of course I’m here with Dr. Richard Davidson. Richie, to all of us who know him well, one of the preeminent neuroscientists on the planet. And today we’re gonna discuss one of the most common problems that probably every human faces, which is how incredibly hard it is just to stay focused. Now, I must admit, maybe this is an embarrassing admission, given that I’m supposedly one of the experts who’s talking about this stuff. But there’s a lot of days where I’m sitting, getting stuff done, answering emails or focused on some project. And it’s just really hard to not get pulled in to other things. You know, I’m answering emails and suddenly I’m shopping online or I’m working on a report and then I’m checking my emails. It’s just it feels like There are so many things in our life that are just pulling us in a million different directions. And I thought today we could just answer two very simple questions. One, why is it so incredibly hard to stay focused? And two, what can we do about it given this chaotic world we’re living in? So maybe we can just I can just turn this over to you, Richie, and you can kick this off however you want to. But I’d love to hear specifically from a neuroscientific point of view at some point. But yeah, what does this spark for you?
Richie: Yeah, well, first it sparks familiarity.
02:51 — Are We More Distracted Than 50 Years Ago?
Richie: So, you know, I think that it’s true. I often say we’re all participants in a grand experiment for which none of us have provided our informed consent. And that’s, of course, referring to the exposure that we all have to this extraordinary amount of information through Our online activities through social media, all of that. And that’s a huge source of distraction. And so, you know, I think that one, I certainly think that it’s inevitably true that one major reason why people experience more distraction perhaps today than they did And there are data to suggest that we are indeed more distracted today than we were 50 years ago. It’s not just a kind of subjective impression, but inevitably I think it’s at least in part true that it’s because of our exposure to this information that is so readily available. So we’re clearly not going to change that. We don’t have the power To influence the tech companies to do the kind of regulation that might be needed. So, you know, we’re left, I think, with the inevitable conclusion that really the only thing we can change is our own minds. And so that, I think, is an important opportunity. And so here’s another case where the kind of, quote, And us being so distracted can also be the opening for real change and transformation. And in the language that you and I have used, Cort, in our book, Born to Flourish, and at other times in Dharma Lab, we can think of distraction itself as an affordance, distraction itself as a moment of awakening, if you will, because the moment we recognize we’re distracted, That’s a moment of awakening and can really be helpful in the process of changing your mind.
05:15 — Why the Brain Is Wired for Distraction
Cort: I’m curious about the neural mechanisms for why we are so easily distracted. I think the experience is, it’s like our attention is like a restless puppy that just gets excited and is rushing off after any bright, shiny object. It sees a squirrel on a tree outside and it’s banging itself against the window and then hears something in the kitchen and goes racing off. And it feels like that sometimes. I mean, it feels like that, you know, even for me having 35 years of meditation under my belt and done all these long retreats where I’m very specifically training my attention. And I feel like in some respects have, you know, have developed A strong attentional skill set, so to speak. And yet I still feel that when I’m in a meeting like this, I could be talking to you and then I see a notification on my computer or something happens in my environment. It seems like the mind and brain are just... Really wired actually for that to happen. I mean, it clearly, you know, happened spontaneously and effortlessly countless times every single hour. So what’s going on in the brain? I mean, is it as it seems that this is sort of how we’re wired? I imagine there’s evolutionary reasons why this is this is likely to be the case.
Richie: I think it is in part how we’re wired. We are wired to detect surprise, to detect discrepancies, to detect rare events, because those often are events that have more salience. For example, our Sensitivity to danger and to cues that may signal danger. Those are the kinds of things that are relatively rare, but they’re super important. So we want to be primed, if you will, to notice those. And the problem is that that machinery that evolution has provided us with can be harnessed or hijacked by all these other things around us. But I think I can pretty much guarantee based on everything we know that if you receive the identical information, say something surprised you that drew your attention, if that thing were repeated 10 times, by the 10th time, you’re no longer going to pay attention to it. And that process habituation is something we know very well. And so the masters of technology have very much figured out how to capture our attention. By providing us with, in many cases, more and more extreme examples of things that are of interest to us. And the increased extremity has all kinds of, I think, really unfortunate consequences. But one of them is that it will capture our attention. But it can also serve to further reinforce and reify certain kinds of extreme beliefs that we might have, which can of course be a key driver of divisiveness.
09:03 — How Our Attention Gets Hijacked
Cort: I wonder if we translate this into a very practical tool. I could see this understanding of the way the brain works, and especially the things that tend to capture our attention, the things that can be easily hijacked, as you said, for people who want to... If the objective is to keep people in your app as long as possible, if you imagine a lot of social media platforms these days, that’s what they want. The product is actually not what we’re doing. Actually, we are the product. It’s our attention that’s being sold. And so in a way, what they want, you know, they’re harvesting our attention in a way is what’s going on. And so they’re designing for that. And it’s an interesting question, you know, in the, you know, the way you’re framing it, because it’s sort of the question is, What loopholes in our brains are they exploiting so they can get more of our attention? And for me, having studied this and explored this myself, I can see understanding that actually is very empowering because now I know the game. I can see what they’re doing. You know, for example, if I’m on social media, I can actually see the way the algorithms work like, oh, if I watch that video a little longer, and I swipe past this other one, I know in a few in a moment or two, two or three videos later, I’m going to see something So maybe we could just zero in on that for a moment because it is, as I said, quite empowering. What are some of the things that are exploited? If you could give a little mini class, what would you look for so you can be conscious of it versus unconsciously, unwittingly pulled in by it? What would you look for, like the things that are going to capture your attention?
Richie: Yeah, so you’re asking what would we look for in the brain itself? Yeah,
Cort: what are the brain mechanisms that are being hijacked and how might we be conscious of what’s happening versus it just happening to us and we’re unconscious of it?
Richie: Yeah, that’s super important. So the hijacking of attention can happen in a number of different ways. One of the most fundamental ways in which it happens Is that there’s an interaction between the brainstem and specifically a part of the brainstem that is rich in norepinephrine and it’s called the locus cerulein. And it has projections that are very widespread to many different regions of the cortex. And basically what happens is that when something captures our attention, as opposed to us directing our attention to it voluntarily, but being captured unwillingly, if you will, or unintentionally. It just grabs our attention whether we like it or not. Right. What’s happening is that there is a transient increase in activation the locus coeruleus, which is this site rich in norepinephrine. And then there are these very widespread projections to the entire cortex. And so there’s a transient increase in cortical arousal that’s pretty broad, even if the The event that occurred, the stimulus was, say, just the sound. It would be broader than just the auditory part of the brain, just broader than just the auditory cortex. It would really be all over the brain. And this is the kind of thing that would capture our attention. But if it’s repeated, if the identical event is repeated a few times, It would show what we call habituation, where you would not respond to that. And so, you know, that’s one of the most basic mechanisms for attention capture is this kind of rare or surprising event.
13:20 — Why Surprise Captures the Brain
Cort: And so is sorry, just to to pause for a second there. If I’m uh building some new product and I want to harvest people’s attention and I come to you as one of the world’s leading experts in this area and I just say okay richie I want I want to hijack this exact neural loop that you just talked about like what are the best strategies like what could I design like what could I build into this new app or this new product whatever it is what would be the most effective ways to hijack this system surprise you kind of mentioned one is surprise something that’s Shocking or surprising or unexpected.
Richie: That sounds like that’s one of the... Yeah, and so to create that kind of unexpected burst, if you will, the most effective way of doing it is presenting a set of events which are all repetitive and very similar and then follow it by something totally novel and surprising. It’s the oddball. Yeah. And so there’s a very famous experimental paradigm in neuroscience and psychology called the mismatch negativity, which is a version of this. And basically what a mismatch negativity is, is if I present a series of tones of a certain pitch, and then it’s followed by a tone of a different pitch. So if we do something like this, Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, boop, beep, beep. Your response to the boop would be totally, your brain would just automatically... Um, detect that and it would be, uh, and there’s a very well characterized signal in the brain that displays that. Um, and it’s, it’s very difficult, even I should say in long-term meditators, um, Although we do have some evidence to suggest that there are some alterations, but at least in moderate term meditators, this is so basic, it’s very hard to override. So it doesn’t change.
Cort: We still, no matter how much you’ve meditated, your mind still gets... Yeah, although there are,
Richie: you know, if I did it instead of with simple tones, if I did it with words, for example, where I presented words of a certain category like zebra, tiger, monkey, elephant, flower, rabbit. Where the discrepancy is semantic in that case and not the auditory features themselves, that’s much more likely to be something that can be overridden, if you will.
16:35 — The Reinforcement Loop Behind Endless Scrolling
Cort: So it seems like one of the takeaways, this is super interesting, and actually I can already see this in the endless swiping of social media, that if you’re advising, you would say, okay, what you don’t want to do is have too much repetition. You don’t want For example, if I watch a cat video and I watch the whole thing and the algorithm is like, okay, this guy clearly likes these cute cat videos. You don’t want to just show me 10 cat videos at that point because you’re just going to get habituation. What you want, and I think this is exactly what it does, is you want at random intervals, like maybe you have to swipe through five things to get a cat video and then you don’t see one for 10 videos and then it’s after two. It’s sort of unexpected and you get it, but you never know when you’re going to get it. Is that right? Like if you’re advising like that... I think this is actually how it is. If you pay attention, you’ll actually start seeing these patterns, especially in social media.
Richie: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, in the psychological literature, that’s called the variable interval reinforcement schedule. And, you know, that’s extremely addicting in terms of its attentional capture.
17:44 — How Emotion Disrupts Self-Control
Cort: And what about emotion? I mean, you talked about surprise, obviously. Another very interesting thing, again, I’m sort of fixating on social media here, but I think you could look at other forms of distraction as well. But it’s very interesting to look at What’s pulling attention in relationship to the emotions it provokes and the strength, both the kind of emotion and the valence, whether it feels more uplifting or a fear or more negative. What would you say about that? Again, if you’re our key neuroscientific wizard architecting how to distract us.
Richie: Yeah, I mean, certainly emotion and different kinds of emotion are going to be absolutely key in producing distraction. We know that emotion can disrupt the prefrontal cortex. And so the prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that is a key zone for the central executive network, for the network that is guiding behavior.
Cort: So it’s the opposite of the hijacked. It’s the part that’s saying, here’s where I want to go and I’m going there.
Richie: Right, self-control. And emotions will disrupt the prefrontal cortex. And so there’s a continuous dance between the emotional centers of the brain and the prefrontal cortex. And there’s bi-directional communication. So there is communication about emotion from subcortical regions up to the prefrontal cortex. There’s also... Top-down influences from the prefrontal cortex to these subcortical emotional regions that can help regulate them. But this is actually the role of the prefrontal cortex and all this is super important because, and this is speculative, but in our evolutionary past where we had many fewer Episodic, phasic influences on our behavior like we do today. The prefrontal cortex can put into operation a plan which then gets executed over some long period of time. Where there were many fewer at least external distractors. And I think that it’s, and here’s the speculative part. I think that the conditions of modern life today are such that we’re starting from a much lower baseline in terms of our prefrontal skills. In our evolutionary past with many fewer distractors Sort of external stimuli that were bombarding us. We relied on the prefrontal cortex more to guide our behavior. Now we have basically ceded control to the forces around us. And it has led to a kind of impairment, a collective impairment in prefrontal function that we’re all suffering from.
21:24 — Rebuilding Control Over Attention
Cort: That’s a good segue. Maybe we could have our concluding part of this discussion to put our actual hats on. I guess we’ve been playing a role that we would never normally play because, of course, we want to do the opposite of hijacking attention. We want to do what you’re talking about now, which is how can we re-energize and build up the skill set with the prefrontal cortex. And our ability to manage and consciously be in the driver’s seat with our attention versus it being hijacked. So let’s kind of shift gears and now share some of the strategies that put us back in the driver’s seat. So what would you say there? We certainly can talk about our Experiences meditators, but from a brain and from a neuroscientific point of view, anything that you think is some key insights about the brain that would guide how we should view this and how we can do it in daily life?
Richie: Yeah, I mean, I think that some of this is both from knowledge of the brain, but also from kind of practical everyday experience. And that is that I think that just as we do physical exercise and benefit from reps, so to speak, we can benefit from reps with our mental health. And neural capacities. And so, you know, one way to do this is, and we’ve talked about this at various points in the past in different ways on Dharma Lab, but every time you feel an urge to take out your phone, instead of immediately taking out your phone and looking at it, simply be aware of the urge. And make a decision about whether this is actually a time when you need the phone and you should take it out, or whether it’s a time to simply acknowledge the urge and let it rise and fall away like the clouds in the sky. And so there actually is a choice that we can make at that point. But we need to be aware to begin with. That really is a necessary condition for this. If you’re not aware of the urge in the first place, it will immediately hijack your behavior and you’ll just automatically pull out your phone. That’s what we do most of the time. And the invitation in this path that we are talking about and promoting here on Dharma Lab is that there is another way to operate in the world And it’s a way that is infused with this gift of awareness that we all have. And so this is really a way to strengthen the capacity of the prefrontal cortex to self-regulate. Really simple. And we know from some really fantastic longitudinal research that learning to self-regulate early in life is a huge predictor of later adult life outcomes that are beneficial. And kids who have a hard time with self-control early on end up, if there’s no intervention, end up worse off than kids who are better at self-control.
Cort: And there’s, you know, that particular research is super interesting. And it’s also, there’s a whole body of research, which of course, Richie, you’re well aware, just to paint out kind of the other side of the picture, which is that if you’re the kind of person who—I would have been a kid for sure, you know, if we had had the marshmallow test, which is one of these classical tests, like, you know, you imagine putting a marshmallow in front of a kid and say, don’t eat it. For me, I would have, you know, two seconds, that marshmallow would have been down the hatch. I would have for sure been one of those kids. And yet, you know, I’ve spent a lot of my time developing that skill. And so there’s a lot of hope, even if even if we’re the kind of person who might be starting out more on the deficit side of things.
25:53 — Attention as a Practice of Intention
Cort: So I wonder if maybe we could talk about some of the practical things, because I when I think about my life and things I do, I would say if there’s one word that captures the heart of this as a practice, I would say intention. And simply being intentional about what’s going on with my attention. And it was funny because actually, as you were explaining this, I had a practical example of this. I’m, I’m actually sitting in the boundary waters of Northern Minnesota in an Incredibly remote location and there’s a lake very within, you know, basically I could throw a rock into the lake from where I am right now, but it’s very remote and there’s very few boats. There’s not many people. And a boat went by actually as we were, as you were speaking, Richie, and as I was listening to you and you were actively talking about, you know, like how attention gets pulled away and noticing that. And it was, that was like literally happening to me there. I could feel the pull to look at the boat. And it’s a rare occurrence and, you know, and there’s not many people, so I might know those people. But and then I was consciously aware of that, just like you were talking about the cell phone, like you’re aware of it before you follow the impulse. And so I could actually feel the impulse literally as you were talking about this and just choose exercise the intention muscle and just say, I’m going to resist that impulse or just stay with my focus here on what Richie is saying. Noticing the pull of distraction and releasing attention. We could have a whole episode just on releasing attention. That’s kind of its own thing. But just the directing of attention. Just choose. Before your mind gets pulled somewhere, I’m going to choose to bring my attention to my email inbox or I just got an alert. I’m going to choose to do that. And I notice the pull, but I’m going to actually ask myself, do I want to check this message right now? Or I just heard a sound. I’m going to actually choose. Do I want to keep my attention with what I’m doing? Or do I want to, you know, turn and look to see what was happening over there? Like actually just making a choice. Just that intentionality to me is kind of the heart of the practice. And you can just do that, like you were saying, the reps. You can do a thousand of those a day easily.
Richie: Yeah, I think that’s so important. And, you know, to our viewers, this is something that would be, I think, interesting and fun to tinker with in your own life. And one of the things that I often do is I have an Apple Watch. And so when I get certain kinds of messages, it will give me a haptic signal. And I’m very aware that in certain kinds of meetings, like if it happened right now, I would notice the haptic signal and I would not look at my watch. I would be focused on our conversation here. And there are many times in meetings where I will do the same thing. I feel the haptic signal, but I’m making a conscious choice to Keep my attention focused on the meeting. There are other times if I’m in something that’s not in a meeting or something really casual where it would be okay if I looked at it for some reason, if I was expecting something, I might look at it. But there is the distinct opportunity to see it as an opportunity to make a choice.
29:46 — Digital Hygiene: Designing Your Environment for Focus
Cort: And that, and to me, it seems like the intention, intentional aspect, and these are great example of the kinds of things that pull our attention away so many times. One of the areas I would say, which is just a very rich area to practice because it’s happening all the time is like what happens when the distractor is happening, like the haptic signal happens or the sound happens, or in my case, you see something unexpected, it’s happening. And then there’s kind of what you do in that space and being intentional. In some cases, you can choose to go with it. Or in many cases, it’s just noticing that your mind is pulled elsewhere and you just choose to stay with whatever you’re doing, which I think is in most cases that kind of the healthier thing to do. But I think there’s another realm of intentionality, which is actually preemptive. And you can be intentional about what’s going on in your environment so less of those things are happening. I mean, to some degree you can’t control these things, but sometimes you can. I mean, we all have phones, or almost everybody does. I, for example, have just deleted apps from my phone. There’s certain apps that I just felt like these are just not I don’t ever feel good coming away from using this app. And I just remove the app. In some cases, I actually change the settings. So I have no notifications like my phone. As much as it annoys all my family members and anybody tries to contact me, my phone is always muted. My phone is almost never on. And so I check my messages and I have the notifications off on almost every single app. So I go check the things when I want to check them, not because it grabbed my attention. So in that case, it’s almost preemptive. Like I know the things that can and have in the past pulled my attention. And I’m almost architecting my life. So I’m just not going to be, you know, as exposed to those. So it seems like we could almost we can both when it happens, what do we do, but also preemptively, you know, build your life to the degree that you can so that you’re not just constantly exposed to these things, which which just simply can be overwhelming at times.
Richie: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that all fits in a category that I would call digital hygiene. And I’ve been an advocate for creating a curriculum for digital hygiene that would include contemplative practices to help us actually regulate our attention and have that curriculum start with kids. I think it’s really important.
Cort: Yeah, I 100% agree. Well, this has been a great conversation, Richie. I think we would love to hear, for those of you watching this in the comments, we’d love to hear what you do. What are the things that you find distracting? What are the strategies and the methods you found that help you find a little more balance? And maybe we can have a little dialogue offline as you reflect on your own life. But in any case, thank you, Richie, for sharing your insights as always and for you for listening. We hope to see you soon for another episode of Dharma Lab. Take care.
Richie: Thank you so much.
