Simple Tips for Dealing With ‘Leaky Attention’

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Do your best ideas often come to you when you’re not actively looking for them? You’re not alone. If you’re a highly creative person, you might have ‘leaky attention,’ which means that when you focus on one thing, other irrelevant information keeps coming into your head, which may nonetheless prove useful later.

Creatives seem to have attentional systems that work less like a spotlight and more like a lantern that picks up a wide range of information (the same kind babies have). Most other adults have attentional systems that work more like a spotlight, enabling them to concentrate on one thing at a time.

This could have some implications for real life and if it sounds like you may have leaky attention, read on to find out how you can use it to your advantage in some situations, and mitigate the disadvantages you will face in others.

Let’s dive in.

An S or an H: Big Letters or Small?

Psychologists at Northwestern University conducted a 2016 study that involved participants looking at a series of large letters on a computer screen that had been created using smaller letters. For instance, a large S may consist of several small Es.

Before each participant was shown each letter, the researchers asked them to pay attention to either the large letter or the small letters it was made up of. The psychologists asked them to ignore everything else. Next, participants had to indicate as speedily as they could, whether they saw an S or H at the letter size they were paying attention to (large or small).

This seems easy but is made more complicated if asked to focus on the big letter H that happens to consist of many little Ss, rather than being made up of small Hs or a neutral letter like small Es.

Psychologists running the study were particularly interested in how much what they had been told to ignore influenced participants.

Their key finding was that participants who claimed to have more creative achievements to their name, in the fields of dance, cooking, art, and more, tended to be distracted by what was happening at the level they were supposed to ignore, more often than those who claimed few such accomplishments.

The information seemed to impinge on creative people’s awareness even though they had to ignore it if they wanted to successfully complete the task they’d been given.

It would be akin to someone in a real-life situation attempting to read a specific article in a magazine but being distracted by something they notice on the next page, even something as simple as an eye-catching advert. While this would interrupt your reading of that piece, whatever caught your attention may just spark a new idea.

The Real-Life Implications

While this study could have some interesting implications for real life, we should not infer too much from these findings. This research depended on the participants’ own claims about their achievements, so it would be intriguing to see if the claims people made were verifiable. Despite this limitation, the findings did fit with much anecdotal evidence, which seems to suggest that the attentional systems of creative people work in a different way than attentional systems do for others.

Having ‘leaky attention’ may be a strength if you are attempting to come up with new and original ideas, even though it might mean you must shut yourself in a quiet room and don noise-cancelling headphones when you need to focus. Let’s find out how you can use your ‘leaky attention’ to your advantage, especially when your brain is in idea generation mode.

Dealing With ‘Leaky Attention’: How to Mitigate Disadvantages and Derive Benefit

When you need to generate ideas, having ‘leaky attention’ can be an asset. However, you will need to adopt some practices to lessen the detrimental impact you may experience when you put your ideas into practice. There are even some disadvantages to focusing. Let’s explore.

Idea generation

When you’re coming up with new ideas, surround yourself with as much noise and activity as possible to make the most of your ‘leaky attention.’ Your rambunctious surroundings are bound to give birth to many ideas, which you can then sort through and evaluate.

What do you do once you’ve had a good idea?

It is best to:

• Take yourself somewhere quiet when it comes down to executing your idea, to give yourself a better chance of remaining focused.
• Avoid task-switching because as a more creative person, you are more likely to become distracted when you jump between tasks.
• Use time blocking to aid concentration and schedule breaks so that you can remain focused and productive for longer. You can use the Flowtime Technique or the Pomodoro Method to help you do this.
• If necessary, you can use apps like FocusBooster to help you focus on a single task for 25 minutes.
• You can even do some exercises designed to improve your working memory and give you more control over your ability to focus. Be careful not to do too much training and stifle your creativity. Having high levels of creativity is the greatest strength of having a ‘leaky’ attentional system.

The disadvantages of focus

In a world filled with distraction, we tend to hunker down and concentrate to get work done. This can help us be more productive but being too focused can lower our creativity. Keeping our noses to the grindstone all the time can also disrupt our decision-making and productivity. Here are some limitations of focus.

• Competition blindness – Focus makes your neural pathways akin to train tracks rather than an open space in which ideas can propagate. If you become a creature of habit, you will stifle your creativity and lose the benefit of having ‘leaky attention.’
• Less chance for innovation – Sometimes when you’re deeply focused on something, you fail to make connections between ideas, meaning there is less opportunity for you to make intuitive leaps that lead to innovation.
• Less resilience and team cohesion – Focus takes energy. A lack of energy makes you unproductive because it impairs your ability to think clearly. This can make you care less about the efforts of your teammates because you are more focused on yourself.
• You can become vulnerable to decision traps – If you are concentrating on one thing, you may become blind to what is around the corner, and in business, it helps to make predictions about what the future may hold, so that you can plan your next move.

It seems wise, given the shortcomings of hyperfocus highlighted above, to discover how you can unfocus and make the most of your ‘leaky attention.’  

Activating the Unfocus Circuit and Using Leaky Attention

When the unfocus and focus circuits in the brain are both active and in balance, your brain has cognitive rhythm, and you can work more efficiently. At least ninety percent of brain activity is unconscious, so it is crucial to learn how to unfocus so you can access the full potential of your subconscious.

The unfocus circuit of the brain is known variously as the Default Mode Network and the ‘Do Mostly Nothing’ network.

Even when you’re not doing anything, the brain is formulating and combining new ideas and making connections to gain new insights.

Here are a few things you can do to consciously activate the ‘Do Mostly Nothing’ circuit.

Positive Constructive Daydreaming (PCD)

This is learning to drift off productively. Slipping into a daydream is not helpful, but neither is feeling guilty about doing so. However, one type of daydreaming may be advantageous. Positive Constructive Daydreaming (PCD) may unlock creativity and revitalise the brain.

You can start deliberately building PCD into your day. Use playful imagery to withdraw your attention from a low-key activity you’re engaged in, like gardening. This activates the ‘Do Mostly Nothing’ circuit in the brain which may help you imagine what may happen in the future and make you more creative.

Take a nap

When tired, take a nap where possible. We have discussed what makes napping so great for productivity in an earlier post but it is also a great thing to do if you want to exploit ‘leaky attention’ and unleash your creativity. Your brain is more likely to make interesting, uncommon connections between thoughts and ideas, giving you far greater insight.

Doodling

Want to improve your memory? Try doodling. Doodling helps you relax so your brain can retain more information when your unfocus circuit is active.

Try adopting someone else’s identity for a while

Adopting the identity of someone else for a short time is called psychological halloweenism. Choose the persona of an eccentric poet if you want to get your creative juices flowing, rather than a rigid librarian. A good rule of thumb is to take on the identity of someone who would possess the qualities or characteristics you wish to emulate.

Wrapping Up

We have investigated some of the research conducted into the phenomenon of ‘leaky attention’ and explored what implications it could have in real-life situations. We have seen how learning to use it effectively could help us mitigate some of the disadvantages that come when we remain hyper-focused. You can use some of the tips we shared to help you activate your unfocus circuit at will. Soon, you will learn to focus when necessary to work effectively and be productive but will always know you can unfocus and unlock your creativity and gain original insights.

Who knows? With a bit of practice, you may be able to use your ‘leaky attention” and ability to unfocus to make savvy career moves and smart decisions in both your professional and personal lives. Start building periods of unfocus and PCD into your life today!