Distraction

Key claims

• A distraction can be defined as an urge to avoid the present task in order to reduce the effort required.
• Distracting impulses are also subject to sensitization and habituation.
• Distractibility is not a permanent trait.
• Distractibility is a state of training.
• Some people develop certain habits with less training than others.
• Learning to feel the urge of the distracting impulse makes habituation easier.
• Emotions are best processed when felt in the chest.
• Traction in a task is when your level of engagement for the task matches the effort required.
• With enough engagement, you attain flow.
• Distraction occurs when you try to lower the effort the task requires, which produces disengagement.
• Disengagement from the task, coupled with high effort required, is seen in states of hyperfocus and automation.
• Feeling an emotion or urge sends a “message received” signal through the same vagus nerve back to your amygdala.
• The most crucial distinction within types of attention is task attention vs. predictive (or default) attention.
• Task attention uses your central executive function network.
• Predictive attention, also called default attention, uses the default mode network.
• Task attention works in the present moment.
• Predictive attention concerns the past or future.
• The main content of predictive attention is unfinished business.
• Traction comes from these two modes of attention working together.
• This working together of the two modes of attention produces flow.
• We have deliberate and automated appraisals.
• We also have deliberate (task) and automated (predictive) attention.