When was the last time you sat down at the computer and just focused on one project, one issue, for one hour, without being distracted or checking your email, or finding out the latest celebrity gossip, or seeing how your sports team did, or finding a really funny video showing a cat water-skiing.

Yeah, I thought so. Me neither. But don’t worry. You are not alone. OK, we are not alone.

Short attention span

According to a new study, in the past decade the average attention span has dropped dramatically from 12 minutes to five minutes. Five minutes. That’s barely enough time to boil a hard-boiled egg. Hardly enough time to make a decent cup of tea. You wouldn’t even be halfway through the Derek and the Dominos classic  “Layla” (OK, that dates me) before your time is up.

The study says that today the average office worker checks their email 30 to 40 times an hour. An hour. It’s like a Pavlovian response. The little image appears in the corner of your screen or a sound goes off telling you there’s a new email in your inbox and you rush there to check it out. Odds are it’s going to be worthless or something that could have waited a few minutes, or quite  honestly a few hours, or days or weeks or you could even ignore it completely and life would go on. Yet still you feel the need to go and check it out right, right, now.

To delay might mean. Well, what!

Exactly. We are rushing around from one thing to another and not necessarily doing anything better or more skillfully or thoughtfully. All we are doing is doing it faster. The downside of that is that anything that forces us to slow down, or – god forbid – stop – then just drives us crazy. We’re addicted to speed. Addicted to multiple stimuli at the same time.

Addicted is the right word to use in this context. This new study found that social media may even be changing the way our brains work, re-wiring our circuitry, making us impatient and forgetful and distracted.

OK, what was I saying?

Slow down, let it sink in

Think about it. When was the last time you watched a video – other than a movie – that lasted more than a few minutes. How often do you just dismiss out of hand anything that looks as though it might take a few minutes to watch or read. How often do you just move on from an article that actually requires some real thinking, maybe even reading it a couple of times to understand it.

We are trying to save time. Instead we are losing our minds.

There’s a scene early on in the movie “Defending Your Life” where Albert Brooks realizes he is dead and is being assessed as to whether he will move on to another realm, or go back to earth to try again. Rip Torn tells him that it all depends on how much of his brain he actually used, saying that most people only use a tiny portion of their brain. Brooks is stunned to learn that he only uses 3 percent of his brain. Three percent, says Brooks! “Yes” says Rip Torn “Everyone on earth uses 3 percent of their brain, 3-5 percent. That’s why they are there. When you use more than 5 percent of your brain you don’t want to be on earth!”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF897aNyxSs

That’s how I feel sometimes, that there are large parts of my brain that I’m not using. That half the time I’m kind of day dreaming my way through life. That large sections of time are taken up with my brain trying to remember obscure lyrics to bad 80′s pop songs, or the name of the actor who appeared in that movie that was set in Paris and directed by whojamacallit! You know the one!

Whole hours can disappear without a substantial thought appearing or taking hold. I appear to be thinking. But appearances can be deceptive.

What’s on your mind

And I’m guessing I’m not alone. Looking around me on any given day there seem to be an awful lot of people staring blankly around them. Now, I’m sure some are brilliant astro-physicists who only appear to be day dreaming, but instead they are thinking deeply on the origins of the universe. But I’m guessing most of the folks who look as if they are blank are, actually, blank.

What a waste eh! Think about it for a minute, or more. If we were able to really concentrate for extended periods of time, to focus on a task at hand, a challenge, to work out a problem, to bring an idea from a notion to reality - just imagine what we could achieve. No more hours spent in front of the TV watching shows that we barely remember the next day. No more days where if someone were to ask you “what did you do today” you couldn’t really answer.

We might be able to do wonderful things, create beautiful works of art, write wonderful literature, or at least witty and interesting stories. Or maybe our talents lie in other directions. If we could concentrate for a while we might discover what those are.

It’s all in the mind

Perhaps the reason so many people respond to the question “What’s new” with “oh, you know, same old same old” is because there really is nothing new. We’re all too busy not thinking to do something new, try something new, or even realize that we’re doing the same thing over and over again.

Charles Schulz

As Charles Schulz, creator of Snoopy, once said “Sometimes I lie awake and night and I ask ‘Where did I go wrong’. Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.’

So maybe the solution is to stop. And think. Just think. That’s all.

Think about it.

I love getting the New York Times on Sundays and devouring it, curled up in my favorite chair sipping a cup of coffee!  It’s a luxury to me to be able to “really” read the paper and absorb the stories rather than just race through and grab information from the newspaper while getting ready to go to work.   Sundays, I use the time to discover “new” ideas, different opinions, cultural trends and business practices.  This Sunday, while reading one of my favorite features, “Corner Office” I discovered an important message.

NYTimes reporter, Adam Bryant interviewed Cristobal Conde, the president of SunGard (a software technology company) Mr. Conde is an IT kind of guy and his company is built on how to make technology available to financial, higher education, and government agencies.  Now you would think Mr. Conde is a techie freak but he isn’t.  In fact, the lessons he learned as CEO of his company it all about relationships and thinking.  Mr. Conde says he tries to take 1 1/2 hours everyday just to close his office door and think.  My first thought when reading that was, “Wow, an hour and a half? Where does he find the time?”  Think about it, or do you have the time?

Mr. Conde “makes” the time.  He believes it is so important for his company’s future that he takes time to consider, contemplate, goof off in his mind.  It doesn’t matter what he thinks about but it is important to take the time.  Mr. Conde says, “Sometimes it gets cut short.  But many topics or issues can only be dealt with in an uninterrupted format.  I worry about our entry-level people- they’re bombarded with information, and they never get to think”.

Well friends, guess what, there is a study out about that!   Yes, Stanford researchers have found that people who are multitaskers, and by that I mean even folks who are instant messaging, writing a report, and listening to music or taking phone calls do not pay attention, control their memory, and are easily distracted from any focus on the array of tasks before them.  The study was published in the Aug 24 edition  of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  Their findings show that multitasking actually impairs the organizing mechanisms in your brain.

100 Students in the study were put though a series of three tests,  half were self confessed heavy multitaskers and the others were low multitaskers.  After the tests the researcher found that the high taskers were constantly distracted by irrelevant information because they just couldn’t ignore it.  Follow up studies showed that high multitaskers had a low performance in  memory  and organizing information.  They just couldn’t filter out the irrelevant information. Plus, they didn’t take in enough information to contemplate with any depth of knowledge.

So there you have it, take it from a high tech guy like Cristobal Conde, if you really want to get ahead, take time to think, one thought at a time.  Still, how the heck does he find an hour and a half?  Maybe he’s lifting weights, or would that be multitasking?  How many tasks makes multi.  Hmmm, I’ll have to think about that.

Most people think of them as the left brain and the right brain. The left brain is the logical one, the one that deals with linear thinking, like solving math problems or planning a road trip. The left brain thinks analytically, it’s responsible for understanding languages, numbers, words and writing. The right brain thinks in pictures, emotions, sounds and symbols. Due to the right brain’s emotional sense, it can effect not only our psychological but also our physical states of mind. By imagining positive images the right side can make us feel comforted and safe which in turn can create a more relaxed frame of mind and actually lower blood pressure and loosen tense muscles. This is not just a belief, it’s a scientific fact, backed up by many studies; what you imagine can change the chemistry in your body.

Guided Imagery and hypnosis are used to promote a healthier outlook and a sense of well being just by imagining positive outcomes. We spend most of our time in our left brain, the logical thought processes in the conscious state of mind, because in our society that’s how we are educated and rewarded. You get an A if you know all the facts and information. You get into college if you get good grades, etc.

The right brain is where the subconscious mind lives. So focusing your attention on positive results will give your subconscious mind the authority and the go ahead to create a positive reality, just like worry and negative thoughts create an negative reality.

The subconscious mind doesn’t analyze, it doesn’t figure if the outcome is possible or not, it doesn’t judge or compare your thoughts with reality or try to identify exactly how something can or cannot happen, it simply takes your word for it and goes to work to create the goal or outcome you have been focusing on.

So, your thoughts are very powerful, that’s why you must be very careful how you think, what you talk about, and what you say to yourself. You attract whatever you put your attention to. If you focus your thoughts on how unlucky you are, you will be unlucky. If you focus on thoughts that you can’t lose weight, you won’t!

We do it all the time; you know, the thoughts in your head that tell you what might go wrong, or what to judge, or just those thoughts that give you something to worry about. Worry is how most of us experience our imagination, we anticipate problems, we rehearse arguments over things that haven’t even happened yet, we prepare ourselves for failure.

But we can change the pattern of worry by using the imagination to our advantage. We can train our mind to put our subconscious to work FOR us not against us, to create a better outlook. All you have to do is imagine the best. Don’t let the left brain tell you no! Just pretend, imagine, see it, taste it, feel it. As if it has already become reality, and it will.

Okay, all you left brainers out there, just do it for 2 weeks. Notice what you say to yourself and make it a positive statement instead. Meet back here in 2 weeks and tell me what you found out!