There are times when it is just hard to get work done. You want to read a book, but you can’t stop
thinking about a comment a friend made earlier in the day. You need to get something written, but there
is a little voice in the back of your head trying to get you to check your
email. Think of how productive you could
be if you could just focus on what you are doing rather than having your mind
wander all over.
If you were trained to focus, would that actually make you
more effective at thinking?
This question was explored in a paper in the May, 2013 issue
of Psychological Science
by Michael Mrazek, Michael Franklin, Dawa Phillips, Benjamin Baird, and
Jonathan Schooler. These researchers
explored the influence of mindfulness training on performance in a few thinking
tasks.
Mindfulness training uses elements of meditation to help
people become more aware of their thought patterns. By doing exercises like concentrating on a
taste or a smell, people learn to recognize the way that other thoughts can
intrude on their current experience.
Along the way, this training helps people to learn to avoid actively suppressing
thoughts, which can actually make people more likely to have the undesired
thoughts.
In this study, a sample of college students was randomly
assigned either to a 2-week mindfulness training class or to a 2-week class on
nutrition (which focused on healthy eating).
All participants were given a pre-test and a post-test. They did a test of reading comprehension
taken from the GRE. They also did a test
of working memory. Working memory is the
amount of information you can use in the moment to think. The more that your mind wanders, the less
working memory you have to focus on the task at hand. During the tests, participants were also
asked questions about their mind wandering.
At various points during the test, they were stopped and were asked
whether they were concentrating fully on the test or whether they were having
other thoughts unrelated to what they were supposed to work on.
The participants given the nutrition class showed no
reliable difference in their performance on either test from the beginning to
the end of the study. The number of
mind-wandering thoughts did not change either.
The participants who were given the 2-week mindfulness
training class improved on both the reading comprehension and working memory
tests. Their mind-wandering also
decreased. Statistical tests
demonstrated that the improvement in test scores was related to the decrease in
mind-wandering.
This research suggests that when it comes to smart thinking,
you may be your own worst enemy. The
difficulties you have concentrating can have a huge impact on your ability to
learn information and to solve new problems.
Your ability to focus is affected by many factors. Your busy information environment (with
repeated interruptions from cell phones, instant messages, and email) can draw
your attention from what you are trying to accomplish. In addition, your own
mind-wandering affects your thinking.
Mindfulness training like the class used in this study is
one ingredient in a program to make you smarter. This training helps you to learn more about your
own thinking patterns, which ultimately helps you to sustain attention. In addition, spend more time controlling your
environment. When you have hard work to
do, shut off your email program and put your smart phone out of arm’s
reach. Start removing the mental
distractions from your environment.
The less your mind wanders, the more effectively you will be
able to think in the moment.
