In two recent posts, I’ve discussed two of the three human attentional systems and what consultants need to know about them in order to be productive while working in their home offices. In today’s post, I’m going to take on the third human attentional system—the stimulus-driven attentional system—and explain how it fits in with the other two.
Many people see this system as the “villain” in the attentional drama, and certainly, when you’re trying to focus and get work done, it can definitely feel like stimulus-driven attention is working against you every step of the way.
But this doesn’t necessarily have to be true. The key is to understand why this system exists, how it works, and what you can do reduce its negative effects on your productivity.
Attention, Take Three: Stimulus-Driven Attention
Our stimulus-driven attention system (also called our “alerting and orienting network”) constantly scans the environment, looking for any change in conditions. Whenever we detect any appreciable change in the environment—something moving across our field of vision, a sudden change in temperature or air pressure, or some new sound that we notice, for example—we immediately orient toward that stimulus.
There’s a reason we have an alerting and orienting network. This is our built-in danger detector at work, trying to keep us safe by alerting us to changes in the world around us. And since it developed to ensure our survival, this whole stimulus-driven attention and orienting system is both automatic and very powerful. And that’s a good thing—at least when we’re moving around in a dangerous world.
However, having such a powerful stimulus-driven attention network also has a downside, especially in work situations, where we’re trying to use our focused attentional system to stay on task. The kinds of environmental changes that take place in your typical home office environment don’t usually signal dangerous situations, but your stimulus-driven attention system doesn’t know that. It’s just designed to alert you to any change of sufficient magnitude. And when it detects such a change, it drags your attention away from its previous focus (your work) and directs it to the new stimulus.
To make matters worse, even if you quickly dismiss the new stimulus as something irrelevant, it takes some time to refocus on your previous task, so every time your stimulus-driven attention drags you away from your work, you’ll lose some amount of time getting back into the “flow” of the previous task.
As you can see, the stimulus-driven attention system is constantly at odds with the focused attention system. It’s the age-old battle between focus and distraction. And since our job as consultants is to get ourselves on task and stay on task for at least long enough to get a decent amount of work done before our focused attention wanes and we need to do something to reset our attentional clocks, we need to be aware of possible distractions in the environment and remove those distractions proactively whenever possible.
Distractions fall into two major categories: visual distractions and auditory distractions (and, of course, sometimes there is both a visual and an auditory component to a single distraction). Let’s look at the two categories separately.
Removing Visual Distractions
Let’s talk about visual distractions first. Our visual systems are very sensitive to distraction. Just the barest flicker of something moving in our peripheral vision (which, believe it or not, spans some 220 degrees, from slightly behind one shoulder to slightly behind the other shoulder when we’re looking straight ahead) is enough to alert our stimulus-driven attention system.
Let’s look at the two biggest sources of visual distraction and what you can do to counter them:
Computer Screens
Most of us do the majority of our work on a computer, whether that be a desktop, laptop, or tablet, so there’s no way to avoid computer screens.
But we need to understand that computer screens are designed to be attractive and attention-getting, with all those colorful icons for software programs and apps just sitting there, offering the promise of interactivity at the click of a mouse. The fact is that just having a computer screen visible is in itself a distraction—even if no programs are open!
Then, when we have one or more tabs open in our internet browser, that just adds to the distraction. Sure, maybe you’re working on a document in Word, but there in the ribbon across the top of your screen you see your e-mail program and you just know you have e-mail that you need to check. That by itself is enough of a distraction to cut deeply into your mental focus.
So, what do we do about it? Well, first of all, if you have work to do that doesn’t require the computer, you need to remove that visual distraction from the equation entirely so it’s not calling to your stimulus-driven attention system.
Let’s say you’re getting ready to write a blog post but you need to do some research first. You’ve printed out some articles you need to read as background for your post.
Here’s the important thing. Do not do this reading where you can see your computer screen, even if it’s in your peripheral vision and all that’s visible is the desktop. You have three ways to avoid this distraction:
- Move to another location (like a comfy reading nook, preferably in a different room) where your computer isn’t visible;
- Shut the lid on your laptop (if that’s what you’re using) or turn your tablet face down on the desk; or
- Shut down your computer completely until you’ve completed your reading and are ready to start working on the computer again.
Taking one of these steps will greatly improve your focus on your reading.
But what about when you need to work on your computer? In these cases, the same tool that allows you to get your work done using your focused attention system also provides many possible sources of distraction for your stimulus-driven attentional system.
The obvious thing you need to do is to make sure that you have the work program you’re using display in full-screen mode. This way, you can’t see any distracting icons or browser windows.
But here’s another tidbit about the human brain: we have a limited amount of working memory capacity available to use on whatever conscious task we’re trying to focus on, and studies have shown that just knowing that your browser or your e-mail is open, even when it’s hidden from view by another program, uses up part of our working memory capacity and keeps us from bringing full attention to bear on our task.
The take-away? Close all browser tabs and apps that you don’t currently need so that you know they aren’t available to view with a single mouse click. Just knowing that it would take a certain amount of effort (minimizing your current program, opening the app, logging in, etc.) to get to that potentially-distracting app can put it “out of mind” and allow you to focus.
Smart Phones
The same dangers I discussed above about computers also apply to smart phones. After all, they really are just very powerful, hand-held computers (that also can be used to make phone calls).
And boy, are they distracting (again, that’s intentional on the designers’ part)! Most of us today are used to checking our phones constantly, visiting social media sites, texting friends, and so on. If you don’t very carefully manage your use of your smart phone during the work day, it can keep you in a state of near-constant distraction.
So, what do we do about the situation? The options are similar to those I listed for computers:
- Turn off alerts, turn down the sound, and place the phone face down on your desk until you need it for a work-related task, or
- Put it in another room entirely and allow yourself to check it only on breaks in your work schedule. Again, the point is “out of sight, out of mind.”
Bottom line, I’m not sure there’s one perfect answer for these issues. The key is to be aware of these sources of possible distraction caused by technology and remove them or manage them in a way that allows you to focus attention on the work you need to get done.
Removing Auditory Distractions
Unfortunately, visual distractions are only part of the problem, and removing them is only part of the challenge. No matter what you do to remove distracting visuals from your field of vision, there are still those ambient, irregular sounds that pop up in any work environment, and you can still hear, and be distracted by, these sounds even if you can’t see the source of the sound.
Obviously, there are some distracting sounds that you can remove from your environment (don’t leave the TV playing in another room) and some that you can’t (the construction going on in the street outside your office window). Fortunately, for those distracting sounds that you can’t easily eliminate, I have one powerful weapon to keep them from breaking your flow: background music.
Using Music as a Buffer
I know that it might seem strange to fight distracting sounds by adding more sound into the environment, but that’s exactly what I propose. Let me explain.
The problem with distracting sounds is their unpredictable—and thus, attention-getting—nature. When the room is quiet, any irregular, ambient sound will cause you to orient to the distracting sound. And every time this happens, you have to then refocus on your task, which often takes some time as you think to yourself, “Now, where was I?” If you can limit the number of times such ambient sounds make you stop your work and orient toward the sound, you can reclaim a great deal of lost work time over the course of your day.
And that’s where music comes in—specifically, a very particular type of music: background music.
Now, there’s a lot that I could say about background music—why it works, what the research says about its use, etc.—but for our purposes in this post, I’ll just stick to the basic, bare bones explanation of how to use it to cover distractions so you can stay on task. If you want a much more detailed explanation with step-by-step how-to’s, read the book I co-authored with Rich Allen on the topic, The Rock ‘N’ Roll Classroom: Using Music to Manage Mood, Energy, and Learning.
OK, so here are the basics. Once you get started on a task (researching, writing, product creation), turn on, at low volume, some instrumental music and let it play in the background, providing a “buffer” of sound to cover up those irregular, ambient noises that pop up in the environment almost constantly.
The trick is to play the music just loud enough so that the ambient noises don’t rise to the level of distraction. You’ll know you have the volume right when you vaguely register a sound in consciousness but it’s not distracting enough to make you orient (look up, turn) toward it. Of course, you want to keep the volume just loud enough to accomplish this task and no louder, as you don’t want the music itself to become a distraction.
This brings me to the kind of music you will want to choose for this purpose. I already mentioned that it must be instrumental. There are few things more distracting to the human brain than other human voices—we automatically orient to them and want to know what they’re saying. This includes song lyrics. So choose instrumental music only for this purpose.
Other key characteristics of good background music are:
- Moderate Tempo—Sixty to eighty beats per minute (if it gets faster than eighty beats per minute, you might start to feel the need to wiggle or tap your feet to the beat; if it gets much slower than sixty beats per minute, you might start getting drowsy).
- Repetitive in Structure—The more even and repetitive the music is, the less attention-getting it is—and the whole point here is to not take your attention away from your task. So, choose music that doesn’t vary much in volume or instrumentation and is repetitive structurally.
- Simple Instrumentation—The simpler the instrumentation, the better, so go for solo piano or acoustic guitar music, trios, string quartets, etc., but try to stay away from large bands or full orchestras—there’s just too much variety of sound in such pieces, and variety can be attention-getting.
- Major Mode—Just because background music isn’t supposed to call conscious attention to itself, that doesn’t mean that it can’t exert an unconscious effect on your physiology. Research has consistently shown that people respond positively to music in the major mode as compared to music in the minor mode. So, choose music in the major mode and positively affect your mood while simultaneously helping yourself focus—a win-win!
- Unfamiliar—When we know the tune, it gets our attention. When we recognize a song, we want to sing along (either out loud or at least in our heads). Even when the song is instrumental, we play the tune in our heads as we listen. We might even hum along with it. And the point of using background music is that it not get our attention—that it simply acts as “white noise” to cover up more distracting sounds. So, make sure you don’t use instrumental versions of songs you know.
Warning: You Must Stay in Control of the Music!
Some people who are sold on using background music as a way to increase focus end up making another mistake: they’re tempted to play the radio while working or use a streaming service like Pandora for their background music. This is a very bad idea and should be avoided!
Why? Because the music the DJ on the radio or the programmer on Pandora will choose to play will not be music with the characteristics I listed above for good background music. Even if you choose a radio station that plays a decent amount of music that fits the characteristics (a smooth jazz station, for example), there will be songs that don’t fit and are more distracting—not to mention the DJ talking and the commercials.
The same with Pandora—yes, you can choose an artist that generally produces music that fits our guidelines and build a station around that artist, but the service is then going to mix in other music that Pandora’s algorithm says are similar, and not all of their choices will fit our guidelines. The result? You’ll end up focusing as much on the music as on the task at hand, and divided attention is poor attention, which leads to poor work.
One final warning: Keep in mind that the goal for using background music is to help you focus on your task, not to allow you to listen to music that you necessarily like. If you choose the wrong kind of music, you’ll do more harm than good for your productivity.
And before you try to tell me that you know from experience that you can listen to music you like (which will almost always contain lyrics) and still stay focused on your work, I’ll tell you right now—you’re wrong. I’m not saying that you don’t feel like you’re being productive, but what’s really happening is that you feel good because you’re listening to music you like and this tricks you into thinking that you’re being more productive in your work than you really are.
Research has shown repeatedly that both the quality and quantity of work goes down dramatically when people listen to music that they have chosen primarily because they like it. So, my recommendation is that you stick strictly to the guidelines above when choosing what music to add to your work environment to combat auditory distractions. If you follow these guidelines, you’ll be successful.
Conclusion
Now that you know why we have a stimulus-driven attention system in the first place (to keep us safe) and you know a bit about how it works, you can be much more strategic in your approach to managing your work environment in order to be more productive.
By combining some of the strategies from the first article in this series to keep you in the proper medium-arousal state for productive work and some of the strategies from the second article and this one to increase focus and decrease distraction, you can spend less time distractedly spinning your wheels and get much more accomplished.
If you have a favorite “attention hack” you use to get into flow and maintain focus in your work, I’d love to hear about it. Just leave a comment in the box below.
