Taking Control

OF MY DISTRACTED MIND

These are the suggestions that stood out for me in the last two chapters of the book, ‘The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains In A High-Tech World’

STIMULATE NEUROPLASTICITY

• Traditional & modern approaches to education
• Meditation
• Nature exposure
• Cognitive exercises
• Video game training
• Physical exercise

TRADITIONAL & MODERN EDUCATIONAL APPROACHES

Enhancing your cognitive control. Assess your cognitive control abilities to understand tour strengths and weakness. This will help you understand your attention, working memory and your goal management.

MEDITATION

The is good reason to believe that meditation is associated with a wide range of health benefits. There are two types of home based meditation techniques.

1. Focused attention meditation involves directly focusing on attention on a single object, usually ones breath. Awareness is directed at detecting when this focal point has wandered and then flredirecting it back to s sole focus on the breath.
2. Open monitoring meditation has no single object of attention. Rather you openly monitor hour thoughts, feelings and sensations from moment to moment without reacting to anything.

At their core these are attention exercises.

COGNITIVE EXERCISE (Brain Games)

Mental exercises that involve engaging in repetitive and adaptive interactions with a demanding cognitive task. Usually done through computerized training approaches that integrate an adaptive approach based on performance. The example.they used for attention training was a computer game called Beepseeker where the participant heard there tones and had to correctly identify if a target tone was present among the sistractir tones. Over time the distractir tones moved closer in frequency to the target tone. Making it adaptiveb. Other mental exercises that can generate positive effects on cognitive control should be designed to challenge working memory and goal managment (both task switching and multitasking).

VIDEO GAMES

Interactive media designed to be demanding, adaptive and include lots of feedback. (FPS) Action video games play is critical to force players to juggle a number of varied tasks (detect new enemies, track existing enemies and avoid getting hurt …) which in turn reduces limitations of several aspects of cognitive control. By playing action video games an hour a day you can improve your ability to detect targets by supeeeeing distractions.

NATURE

Exposure to nature can relax the mind from its too down demands by engagement with a strong bottom hp activitybwbich captures the attention, not based on goals but because of the characteristics of the stimuli. Matura environments are inherentlycompelling to us and draw us in with minimal too down responses.

PHYSICAL EXERCISE

Aerobic exercise training improves performance on cognitive control tasks. There is a general finding of improved cognitive control for adults strength and aerobic training in groups. The benefits for older adults include all aspects of cognitive control, working memory, attention and foal management. An fMRI study showed greater prefronsl cortex activity in high-fit versus lower-fit older adults while they performed the interference challenge. Aerobic training increases the brain activity if the cprefrontal ortex and also decreases the impact of distraction on task performance.

NEUROFEEDBACK TRAINING

Manifesting in rhebform of a brain-computer interface that allows the user to gain control over their brain rhythms by receiving real time feedback on how an activity is being modulated when the user thinks in s specific manner.

BRAIN STIMULATION

direct stimulation of the mind with electrical and magnetic fields.

THEIR CONCLUSIONS

• Physical exercise is the only prescriptive approach.
• In a close tie for second, meditation and video game training show strong signs of being effective but are not prescriptive yet.
• With weaker signals that might strengthen into prescriptive over time, drugs, neurofeedback and brain stimulation need more research to present evidence.
• Both traditional education and nature are reasonable hypothesis and deserve more research.

They mention a euro cross fit tea ok Ming program but nothing by name other than a Body-Brain Trainer that uses Xbox Kinect.

PRACTICAL ADVICE FOR CHANGING BEHAVIOR

Maintain better focus by taking the following steps:

1. Improve metacignition by increasing your understanding of the cost of multitasking/task switching and the value of remaining at an information patch. (right side)
2. Limit oaccessibility of information sources. (left side)
3. Decreas tour boredom when focusing on a single goal. (right side)
4. Reduce anxiety that promote a switch to something new. (right side)

STRATEGIES FOR COMPLETING ASSIGNMENTS

• Metacognition - Recognize the effects that brief interruptions have in your work (they can lead to nearly 30 min off task) It is important for you you can find a way to track how much time your are spending on task.
• Accessibility - set up your environment to avoid distraction. Limit your self to one screen. Put away all nonessential work materials. Find a quiet environment devoid of people and distractions. If you must work in a noisy environment consider using noise canceling headphones. Close down all apps that you don’t need to complete a task. Only turn email on for 20-30 minutes st the end of the day.
• Boredom - spend some time standing instead of sitting. Play music that you enjoy to increase your mood while you focus on a single task. Set a time period goal to focus on a task and also set small breaks. Along the way.

TIPS FOR PLANNING RESTORATIVE STRESS REDUCING BREAKS

• Exercise for at least 15 minutes twice a day.
• Train yourself to use the 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes focus your eyes on objects 20 feet away for 20 seconds.
• Expose yourself to nature and get away from technology for ten minutes or so.
• Daydream, doodle state into space to take yourself away from performing a specified task. You want to activate the ‘default mode network’ of interacting brain areas which indicate that you are daydreaming , thinking creatively or just mind wandering - all of which are restorative for attention.
• Short ten minute naps improve cognitive function. Longer 30 minute naps are good to.
• Talking to other human beings reduces stress and improves performance.
• Laugh by reading a joke book, comic strip or watching a funny video (of baby goats)
• Get some cold refreshing water to drink
• Read a chapter of a fiction book

STRATEGIES FOR GETTING A GOOD NIGHTS SLEEP

• Stop using your devices an hour. Write your bedtime.
• Progressively reduce the lights in the room / home an hour before bedtime to all the max release of melatonin
• Keep electronics out of the bedroom and turned off for an hour before bedtime.
• Immerse yourself in as much daylight as you can to regulate your bodies biochemistry
• By removing your phone from the room at bedtime it is easy to avoid reaching for it first thing in the morning. By limiting accessibility to your phone you awaken slowly and gradually

QUESTIONS TO ASK WHEN YOU FIND THAT YOU ARE DISTRACTED

1. How can I increase my metacognitive view of how my own mind performs in a given situation and in what ways are my actions not in line based on my goals and an understanding of my limitations?
2. How might I change my physical environment to reduce accessibility or potential distractions?
3. How might I asses whether I am self-interrupting because of boredom and how might I make the task more interesting to stave off that boredom?
4. How might I recognize when my actions are driven by anxiety about missing out on something in my virtual world, and what steps can I take to reduce that anxiety?

THE GOAL IS TO:

• Improve cognitive control
• Reduce goal interference
• Aid the Distracted Mind