The internet is full of important and interesting things to know about, and it’s hard to manage the volume. Abundance easily becomes overload. I’ve been reading about the economy, Obama, Gaza, Arne Duncan, reading theory, Obama, poverty, and the economy. Oh, and every now and then, cats. I have no interest at all in cats.
Maybe this is normal. This is the age of multi-tasking, after all. But is multi-tasking the best way to get things done? The answer may come from brain research, rather than behavior management. Rather than going on an information diet or simply trying to do more things, more efficiently, Torkel Klingberg, author of The Overflowing Brain, named the Most Important Book of 2008 by SharpBrains, suggests that we learn to exercise our memory. The problem as he sees it is that many of us suffer from an attention deficit trait due to the normal limits of working memory, which brain science now tells us can be enhanced through training exercises.
Klingberg says:
The information age has provided us with high technology which fills our days with an ever increasing amount of information and distraction. We are constantly flooded with on-the-go emails, phone calls, advertisements and text-messages and we try to cope with the increasing pace by multi tasking. A survey of workplaces in the United States found that the personnel were interrupted and distracted roughly every three minutes and that people working on a computer had on average eight windows open at the same time. There is no tendency for this to slow down; the amount and complexity of information continually increases.
He attributes frequent distractions and the need to multi-task as the two major contributors to information overload. And he doesn’t even mention teaching elementary school. If he did, I’m sure he’d have added classroom management to his list.
Working memory, he explains, is a scarce resource. His research shows that working memory can be improved through training exercises, and that the improvement generalizes to enhance our ability to focus on everyday tasks beyond those used in the training environment. He also says that fluid intelligence, related to working memory, can also be increased.
This is hugely interesting, since one of the major problems in teaching is the difficulty so many students have remembering what teachers feel they should know after going over and over the same material. “Training our brains might thus be a way to keep up with the increasing demands of the information age,” Klingberg writes.
It might also be a way to get through the semester.
Other links for this topic:
Attention Must Be Paid – a review of Klingberg’s book at Inside Higher Ed.
Try Thinking and Learning Without Working Memory – general background information on working memory.
Articles by Klingberg – especially noted: “Training of Working Memory in Children with ADHD,” (2002) for the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, which has good background info on ADHD.
More about Promising Cognitive Training Studies for ADHD.
8 Comments
I don’t have any interest in cats either Doug. Chalk that up as something else we have in common.
I certainly agree with you that these issues are of VITAL importance. I’ve actually spent a good part of the afternoon in our kitchen/home office throwing out old papers, and just mentioned to my wife that our need to more effectively wade through and process information efficiently is just going to get MORE important!
I appreciate the reference to Klingberg’s book. I’m adding it to my Amazon wish list.
Did I just read an article (Time Magazine or US News perhaps?) about kids suffering from “distraction (?) disorder from being in constant contact with their devices? My 30-year old son stopped by the other night and check his phone for texts about 10 times while he was here–like he was waiting to be called in at a moments’ notice to do brain surgery–he’s an engineer.
I think it was NPR. I’ll look further while I’m pouring over dozens of blogs, sites, social networks and see if I can focus long enough to find the source. N.
I cracked up when I read that people had an average of 8 windows open on their computers. What?! Is that all? Makes me feel special.
I teach elementary AND have ADD (great combo, I know). The meds certainly help (its analogous to wearing glasses to help you see better) but I’ve found Mark Forster’s book Do It Tomorrow (and site/blog) quite helpful in helping me get away from the multi-tasking lifestyle you mention. Ned Hallowell has one called CrazyBusy that’s supposed to be good as well.
Cats? I’ve always found it interesting if someone has a cat they also have a box of s*%t somewhere in their house and that is a little creepy when you think about it. Great post. Sounds like a great book and I’ll pick it up. Seems similar to the chapter in John Medina’s “Brain Rules” about multi-tasking.
Thanks, teacherninja, for the ADD pointers. I’d like to come back to that subject soon, because when I was writing this I ran across some things that I’d like to explore, if I don’t get distracted.
For the record, I don’t hate cats. Just for the record.
I have cats, occasionally boxes of poop too – you get used to it!
But I digress, I am easily distracted, the endless stream of twitter, rss & facebook, combined with those icons that will fire up a quick game mean I am finding myself increasingly having to have a stern word with myself to get the duller jobs done.
The book looks interesting, might have to give it a read sometime. Although I have noticed that reading books has happened a lot less in my life since I can check twitter and my rss feed in bed from my iPhone!
Hmm, I’m not one for resolutions, but some will power might be needed this year!
Yeah, Dan. I know what you mean. Clicking on a book doesn’t do much for me, either. I’ve read a lot fewer of them since I got my hands on this laptop. For what it’s worth, I find that books and chapters published online are much harder to work through than printed texts. Highlighting helps keep me focused, but that’s not working out too well with the computer screen.
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