Page 66 - Tracy Anderson Magazine – Summer 2020

FLEXING THE

CONCENTRATION MUSCLE

An excerpt from Stefan Van der Stigchel’s book, Concentration: Staying Focused in
Times of Distraction.

Our society is currently undergoing massive changes. “OUR TENDENCY TO
The pile of information is growing ever higher, and it is
to the speedier networks, advanced storage methods, and MULTITASK AND THE
encroaching more and more upon our daily lives, thanks
faster processors that we carry around in our pockets.
The incredibly fast pace of digital change and the increas- ENDLESS STREAM
ing amount of available information means that right now
we find ourselves in the middle of an attention crisis. The OF INFORMATION
market for books on digital detox is huge because of the
stress people are experiencing as a result of the continuous WE ARE SUBJECTED
distraction of social media. Today’s children are growing
up in a world that is a lot different from how the world was TO MEANS THAT
only 20 years ago. Teenagers are massive consumers of
social media and other attention distractors, and this con- MANY OF US HAVE
tinuous yet subtle pulling on a teenager’s attention happens
in a phase when their brain has not yet fully developed, GREAT DIFFICULTY
with the result that they end up using their attention the
wrong way. All it takes is one moment of mental weakness CONCENTRATING.”
or boredom and out comes the smartphone. Just when
they have settled down to concentrate on their studies, to be confronted all of a sudden with a generation of
the sound of an incoming message is there to distract their children who are completely unable to concentrate for a
attention again. significant length of time because of structural changes in
their brains. The potential of our brains remains
Not all of the doom scenarios sketched in self- the same, but our surroundings are changing
help books and the media are accurate. A lot of all the time, thanks to the increase in stimuli.
nonsense is being spouted these days, and there Ultimately, concentration is like a muscle in that
is absolutely no reason to believe that we are all it requires training to stay strong. The more you
going to end up suffering from digital dementia train, the better your concentration. However,
or that our intelligence levels are eventually not everyone develops the same kind of muscle
destined to plummet. However, this does not power, regardless of how hard they train. Some
mean that everything is hunky-dory either. Our people simply have a greater capacity for build-
tendency to multitask and the endless stream ing concentration muscles than others, and this
of information we are subjected to means that doesn’t change, even if you keep increasing the
many of us have great difficulty concentrating. number of stimuli. One thing that has definitely
But there is also some good news: The rise of the changed, however, is the amount of effort that
digital society has come paired with another development, is required from our concentration muscles, and the more
namely our increased knowledge of our behavior and of stimuli you are exposed to and the more you are inclined
the brain. Our understanding of how concentration works to multitask, the more effort you will have to put in if you
is getting better and better, and this is helping us to figure want to maintain your concentration. The trick is to keep
out how to use it in the most optimal manner possible. The the muscles as strong as possible, while at the same time
solution to the problem of what our society needs to do to keeping the amount of effort required to a minimum.
be able to deal with the never-ending stream of informa-
tion lies in our own hands. It is simply a matter of making
the right choices. Excerpt from Concentration: Staying Focused in Times of Distraction, by
Stefan Van der Stigchel. Copyright © 2020 MIT, published in English
by The MIT Press. Originally published in 2018 by Maven Publishing,
Evolution is a slow-moving process, and so we are unlikely Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

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