I'm about fifty pages into Microcosm by Norman Davies and Roger Moorhouse, the book I'm currently reading. The book is a history of the city of Wrocław, whose turbulent past encapsulates that of Central Europe as a whole (full review in a post in about three weeks' time).
The book's prologue, Götterdämmerung – the fall of Festung Breslau in 1945 – was utterly absorbing. I read through it in one go, full of drama and violence, the clash of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Chapter One, however, jumps back to the palaeolithic times and the beginnings of human settlement. This is not my most favoured period of history... consequently I'm finding it harder to stay focused on this story. As my eyes scan over the words, my mind is wandering...
And I can recall this precise sensation – from school, from university, from reading boring press releases at work in the 1980s. How long is this chapter? How much more of it? It is as dull as sifting through soil looking for tiny pottery shards on an archeological dig. I want to get on to the Piasts and the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburgs, but I'm stuck on archeological finds such as fish-hooks and flints from the fifth century BC. I want to skip ahead.
BUT NO! STOP!
Here's the fundamental difference in the way my mind works, age 69, and how it did when I was a teenager. I am aware of my awareness. I am aware that the words passing beneath my eyes hold little interest to me, especially after such a vivid opening to the book, soaked in blood and destruction. And now I'm reading about islands in swampy rivers, the migrations of primitive tribes – the Slenzanians, the Marcomanni, the Przeworskers, the Venedi, none of whom I'd ever heard of. A little peek into the next chapter, maybe?
NO! I have learnt enough about learning to know that every detail, every knot along the thread, has its importance. In a good history book, seemingly inconsequential details can acquire significance hundreds of pages later. Skip over one of them, and you might miss a link in the chain of cause and effect.
And so, having caught myself in the act of skim-reading and not taking anything in, I stop. I consider where in the narrative I (literally) lost the plot, and return to that very paragraph. And I start reading again from there. After a page or two of more focused effort, once again I find my mind drifting. And again, I catch myself in this process. Again, I go back to identify the paragraph where my attention began to wander. And again, I proceed with a more consciously determined attempt to read with understanding. Slowly and thoroughly. Got it? Good.
What's going on? I'm recognising that I've stopped taking in the words I'm reading. And, aged 69, I now have the metacognitive control required to bring myself back to the point at which comprehension broke down. And I'm making the conscious effort to go back, despite the temptation to skip ahead.
A teenaged me, reading an uninteresting passage would have experienced the same wandering of attention as I have just now, but not noticed it, and jumped forward to something more interesting. The older me recognises the departure from the task. It's not an increase in the quality and quantity of my attention; it's an improvement in my ability to notice when it slips, and manage it back on task.
Metacognition is the process of thinking about thinking; recognising when one's thoughts have strayed, and consciously steering them back on course. I could not do this when I was young! (Or if I could, I was not even anything I was aware of.) Age doesn't automatically confer this ability; it develops through experience, practice and self-observation. This ability varies between individuals. It is a capacity I have learned to cultivate; this is not as such a universal benefit of ageing.
This time, I try to get into the subject matter more deeply. I look up the Wikipedia page about the Przeworsk culture, and learn something new. Why, I've even been to Przeworsk, unaware that the town gave its name to an Iron Age material culture that existed across southern Poland for around 700 (!) years from the 3rd century BC to the 5th century AD. Then I dip into the Marcomanni page, and again I learn something new (the etymology of Bohemia). Wikipedia really is the wonder of our age to anyone with curiosity. In my childhood, any unanswered question that bothered me long enough would have to wait until the fortnightly visit to Ealing Public Library. In the 1960s, curiosity had to survive the delay between wondering about something and obtaining the information that might satisfy it.
Nowadays, curiosity can be rewarded immediately. But instant gratification also makes it easy to pursue another question, then another, then another, until one has forgotten the original enquiry – the dreaded rabbit hole. The internet has simultaneously made it easier than ever to chase up some arcane topic but easier than ever to abandon that chase halfway, distracted by a tunnel leading off the original rabbit hole.
Thinking about this at the meta-level: yes, it's easier today to get distracted (have I got any more new replies or likes to my recent Facebook posts?) but it's also much easier to find out answers to questions you may have.
Back from five minutes on Facebook. Gosh, yes. Self discipline. [I have a craving for dried mango, and have lacked the self-discipline to stop myself from eating 1.2kg of the stuff in under three weeks. Yes, dried mango counts towards my daily fruit-and-veg, but Google informs me that a mere 30g of dried fruit constitutes a portion; eating more than 30g per day has no health benefits. A waste, then, because I didn't have the self-discipline to stop.]
Here's a distinction worth making: when I stop reading to look up the Marcomanni, am I being distracted, or am I deepening my understanding? The distraction takes me further into the subject rather than away from it. Contrast that with Facebook, where I emerge five minutes later knowing nothing more about early Central European history, but quite possibly having forgotten why I put the book down in the first place.
I am not arguing that all distraction is bad; I'm saying that we need to become conscious of where our attention is leading us.
Self-discipline – so important. The clouds have moved away, the sun is out, the cats are asleep – time for my walk.
And as I walk, I ponder more upon this subject further. Getting absorbed into any activity, be it reading, writing or painting – for example, getting into that flow state. Being 'in the flow' means having to expend little to no conscious effort in staying focused; you barely notice the passage of time. You are engrossed. This is the opposite of the effortful attention required to concentrate on something that is not naturally holding your interest. Dozens of distractions are lurking within your easy reach. Getting into the flow state requires the self-discipline to persist through the less immediately rewarding bits.
Our minds have two competing tendencies. One is to wander about, covering ground, seeking novelty, new sensations, fresh information. The other is to settle upon one thing and pursue it relentlessly, to the exclusion of everything else. We all experience both tendencies to varying degrees. The trick is not to eliminate either one, but to recognise which is taking charge at any particular moment.
Metacognition. Pay attention to attention.
This time last year:
Cherish the Morning Light
This time two years ago:
Post-consumerist hygiene
This time three years ago:
October's benign end
This time four years ago:
Disclosure day tomorrow?
This time five years ago:
Coping with time change (go to bed an hour earlier!)
This time six years ago:
A sustainable food system for rural Poland
This time seven years ago:
Sifting through a life
This time nine years ago:
Throwing It All Away
This time ten years ago:
Hammer of Darkness falls on us again
[This is what going to be early in winter protects us from!]
This time 11 years ago:
The working week with the clocks gone back
This time 13 years:
Slowly on the mend after calf injury
This time 14 years ago:
Thorunium the Gothick
This time 15 years ago:
Łódź Widzew or Widź Łódzew
This time 17 years ago:
A touch of frost in the garden
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