This distracting world that we live in can create huge struggles for brain injury survivors. Television, radio, podcasts, commercials, cell phones, social media, streaming audio/video, and nearly every page of the internet – it all seeks to grab our attention with bright colors, flashing images, loud or sudden noises, catchy tunes, pop-up ads… anything to divert our thoughts to what they want us to be thinking about. While we aren’t the specific target of all of this, brain injury survivors are among those for whom this content causes the greatest problems.
My Phone is a Danger Zone
When I say “danger zones,” I’m talking about activities and circumstances that present a level of distractions that can impede or even halt our ability to complete the task at hand. The single worst repeating offender in this area is my phone.
Phones are so hard to deal with because things on the display can so quickly destroy my already tenuous hold on whatever I was thinking about when I picked the phone up in the first place. App icon badges display numbers indicating what’s waiting on my attention… 2 text messages, 5 unread personal emails, 6 unread work emails and 2 Skype messages… oh, and it’s my turn in the word game I play with my girlfriend. The line of icons at the top of my screen indicates I can watch the astronauts doing a live spacewalk on the International Space Station, someone just followed me on Twitter, a blog reader left a comment on my recent post, my last virus scan was clean… and the list goes on.
On a daily basis I’ll pick up my phone to do something specific only to notice I have a text message or an email and think to myself, “Oh, I’ll just check that message and then do what I came here to do…” Yeah, right.
Any path aside from the original intent causes a new line of thinking, and with my already limited bandwidth, this means that everything else gets pushed out of my working memory. It can be hard to maintain focus even if I don’t divert intentionally.
Google… A Blessing and a Curse for Me
Simple internet searches are no longer “simple.” The Google search tool on my Android phone used to start with a simple text box waiting for my search criteria. Now, based on the stored history of my internet activity, a series of articles I may be interested in are displayed along with the search window.
As an example, a couple of days ago I hand-churned some butter and wanted to search for articles on how to ferment the remaining buttermilk. I opened Google, and the first thing I saw was an article about strange behaviors from the black hole at the center of our Milky Way. Well, that got my attention… Browsing through the article and returning to the search window, I noticed an article just below it on new discoveries in physics about wormholes. I’m not an astrophysicist, but hey… who wouldn’t want to look at the latest things we are discovering about this Universe around us? And that’s when it hits me. What did I come here to look up? This one only took about a half an hour to reclaim, but some are gone forever.
Unexpected Danger Zones
For me, danger zones are everywhere. As an example, I’m sitting here in one of my favorite local restaurants on a short lunch break and decide to write more for this article. A nice older couple sits adjacent to me, we all smile and say hello to one another. After a few minutes, the gentleman asks what kind of job I have that allows me to work from a restaurant. I tell him about my job, then let him know that what I’m actually doing now is working on my blog. Oh, he knows someone who writes a blog, he says. She has blogged every day for coming on twenty years and is on vacation in Ireland just now – her third trip in three years, it turns out.
After a pleasant few minutes of interaction, their server shows up to deliver menus and exchange pleasantries. I take this opportunity to return to my page of writing and end up just staring blankly at the screen. What was I writing? What was I thinking about a few minutes ago? It doesn’t come back, so we land here.
I could describe many of my personal danger zones, but you get the idea.
“That happens to me and I don’t even have a brain injury!”
Here’s the reality. People without brain injuries will be able to identify with this issue to some degree as well. We do live in a world of distractions. Being someone who didn’t have a brain injury before I actually got one, I very intimately understand the difference in frequency. Before my TBI, it would happen here and there, and still it always seemed to be too often. But now, it is a significant majority of the time and actually makes it difficult to function normally.
Everyone struggles to maintain focus these days, but if you’ve had a brain injury, chances are that your challenge level has increased tremendously.
Developing Effective Strategies
Managing notifications is a good first step. I’ve turned off all live notifications on my phone, so it doesn’t beep or vibrate throughout the day, but once that display turns on so do the opportunities for distraction.
On my computers, both work and home, I’ve disabled live notifications for my email that pop up showing who emailed, what the subject is, and part of the first line of the message for review. Those were making it nearly impossible for me to maintain my focus at work, so they’re gone.
I don’t always remember to do this, but I am trying to develop a habit of consciously recognizing my danger zones as I enter them. As I touched on earlier, when I pick up my phone, I recognize that I will need to navigate a web of distractions working hard to divert me from reaching my goal. By identifying the context and timing of my most common distractions, I try to mentally prepare myself to stay conscious of my goal and avoid all those tempting side roads. Sometimes it works.
When working remotely in my local bistro or similar settings, I wear ear plugs to help reduce audio distractions from music or surrounding conversations. At work, I use my whiteboard to keep from losing track of thoughts, ideas, or tasks.
In Closing…
Find and employ the strategies and tools that work for you to improve your ability to focus. Identify the places where distractions are prevalent, your “danger zones,” and try to start consciously recognizing the challenge you are facing as you start an activity.
I’ve found a few tools and techniques that help me, but I recognize this is going to be a lifetime battle. It’s going to take conscious effort, diligence, and work to learn to manage this area of my life – for the rest of my life.
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