Psience Quest

Your Brain Can Only Take So Much Focus

Srini Pillay

Quote: The ability to focus is an important driver of excellence. Focused techniques such as to-do lists, timetables, and calendar reminders all help people to stay on task. Few would argue with that, and even if they did, there is evidence to support the idea that resisting distraction and staying present have benefits: practicing mindfulness for 10 minutes a day, for example, can enhance leadership effectiveness by helping you become more able to regulate your emotions and make sense of past experiences. Yet as helpful as focus can be, there’s also a downside to focus as it is commonly viewed.

The problem is that excessive focus exhausts the focus circuits in your brain. It can drain your energy and make you lose self-control. This energy drain can also make you more impulsive and less helpful. As a result, decisions are poorly thought-out, and you become less collaborative.

So what do we do then? Focus or unfocus?

I'd be interested to find out what those studies say exactly, and if how the author of the article connects it with "mindfulness" is correct.

Quote:practicing mindfulness for 10 minutes a day, for example, can enhance leadership effectiveness by helping you become more able to regulate your emotions and make sense of past experiences. Yet as helpful as focus can be, there’s also a downside to focus as it is commonly viewed.

I guess it depends possibly on which person definition's of mindfulness, but many mindfulness meditation "techniques" have you just notice the thoughts as they come and go, identify with an awareness of the field of consciousness as such, and not pointedly concentrate on an object as other forms of meditation. I don't know if practicing just being the aware conscious witness of your experience stream involves the type of concentration that these studies claim tire the brain out.