Starting with unicellular organisms, going through all the evolution process to finally get to the present humans, which are still animals, but can think. We can think and that’s where everything around us came from. Starting from the tools, the alchemy, the chemistry, the maths, and the rest of sciences, we are here, living in a powerful civilization, being everything possible thanks to our minds.
Now the key word here is “civilization”. Is there some civilization made up with monkeys instead of humans? or birds? or water creatures? or dogs? have you thought about that? Even the word civilization came from humans; the language came from humans. Every single invention is just that: something someone somehow created.
Now, if I think about that, I can only figure out 2 answers to this post’s question:
Why do we like to lose focus?
You can see this from two different perspectives. Either think the entire humans’ civilization works thanks to a few selected people (geniuses; Einstein, Darwin, Hawking, Jobs, etc.), or think we all have a problem, a problem that causes us to not like to concentrate a hundred percent in what we’re doing right now.
If you think exclusively that geniuses are geniuses and nobody can be like them, then I’m sorry, but you’ll be sad for a long time (you hopefully will eventually figure out it’s not that way). On the other hand, if you think we have a problem you could develop that thought.
If you are more organized and always wants to see everything in order, then we can divide people in three groups: easily distracted, moderately distracted and fully concentrated. As you may think, we change with time and surely we can have a fully-productive saturday, but a full-of-distractions sunday. In an average, it makes us who we are, in some way.
I myself couldn’t figure out where am I, I mean in what group. I sure can spend a weekend morning entirely writing for the blog, fully concentrated in studies, or doing anything else. Yet I know I can be distracted, and somehow I know anybody is at some time distracted by something: I don’t think any of the mentioned geniuses were fully concentrated all the time. What I think is that we all can be in any group and we all are constantly changing from one to another.
So what’s the problem?
The problem is that we all like to be distracted. Distraction is not something exterior. If that were the case, how can you explain being distracted by a plant, a door, the blank wall of the classroom. If distraction were some effect the exterior makes on you, what changed? You’re in a classroom concentrating in the exam, and, suddenly, the wall in incredibly interesting. The wall hasn’t changed, there were no voices telling you the wall is interesting nor anything else. The wall is a wall, a seamless wall that 2 minutes ago was an incredibly innocuous thing.
So, we look for distractions. But we look for them when we need not to think. Some people need this more often than others; the have some kind of thinking-phobia (I’m sorry not to know the greek, nor latin name for that).
Either way, if there is some reason our brain looks for distractions not to think is that thinking is actually stressful for the brain; in lower levels, sure, but see that even then we try not to force us a lot with this.
It is funny, sure, that sometimes you actually concentrate, and can’t be distracted from anything. I read somewhere that concentration is directly proportional to interest. If you’re not interest, your brain will look for distractions: and no matter what, it will find them. Otherwise, it will not be disturbed by plant or any inanimate objets, not even people. If you have real interest for what you’re reading, the distractions, even the smallest like time, will disappear.
Time is a distraction as we’re constantly thinking of it. Sure, you can use it for your own good: manage your time, by hours or whatever. Other thoughts are omnipresent just like time, but they’re mostly created by the environment, or well, the 5 senses. In a normal situation, you could stand all the senses and use your mind for something productive. On the other hand, you could forget about some senses: you can easily forget about the smell and tact, and with some patience you can make yourself deaf, so noises couldn’t disturb you.
Lose focus is ok, but in certain situations: when we want need to be distracted. When we need not to think for a while. When we are exhausted. When we need to empty that little tank we named head, let rest that little friend we named brain and turn off that invisible machine we called mind.
