Translator: Jaegun Lee Reviewer: Arvind Patil
For me, smart living has to start with being productive.
How many of you would like to be more productive?
If you are a student, you would like to get better grades
without having to work harder.
If you have a job, you want to be more productive in your work,
you want to gain more recognition for your work,
without having to put more hours,
because everyone has the same twenty-four hours a day.
And there are many ways to be more productive.
But the one way that I'm going to talk about in my session
is how you can improve your focus, and how you can improve your attention,
and what psychology and neuroscience
have to say to improve your focus and attention.
The big challenge that faces all of us, especially in modern society,
is that there's too much information.
It's both a blessing, but also a curse,
that we have access to infinite amounts of information;
all the knowledge that has been produced by humankind
is at the end of your thumbs just by opening up your phone.
And again it's a huge privilege,
and we're very lucky to be in this kind of era.
it's very hard to choose, and it's very hard to decide where to start,
because we are constantly confronted with too much information.
Secondly, we also distract ourselves. It's hard to focus on our own.
One good example is that you commonly see people walking down the street
with their eyes glued to their phone.
And, of course, they're somewhat oblivious to their surroundings.
See he's coming to the door and boom,
he just hits the door, walks right into it.
In the next video is a woman walking in a mall checking out her cell phone.
And you can see that she fell straight into that fountain.
Okay? So, you know, we distract ourselves all the time,
making us oblivious to our surroundings.
but, of course, there are more serious dangerous examples.
For instance, if you're driving a train, an engineer driving a train,
and you lose your focus for even just a few seconds,
then if you don't slow down your speed
your train is going to run off the tracks to very dangerous effect.
So these are just a few examples of how we are overloaded with information
and how we distract ourselves.
And so the question is: How can we improve our focus?
We are living in what John Cassidy of "The New Yorker" magazine
calls the "attention deficit disorder economy"
or the "attention deficit disorder society."
And the consequences of that we're still trying to understand.
We know that it means that we're a little less focused,
more distracted, we may be more shallow.
This overwhelming information may make us less productive.
And as I just pointed out over here, it can also lead to dangerous situations.
The economic cost of attention deficit
has been estimated to be even up to about $200 billion in the United States alone.
These are serious problems that affect our productivity.
I want to see how well you can attend at the beginning of my talk.
This is a video, and your task is to focus on the team with white clothes
and ignore the team with black clothes, Okay?
They're going to run around the screen,
how many times they're passing the ball to other players on the screen,
other white players, white T-shirt players, on the screen.
Okay, count it quietly in your head,
and then at the end I'm going to ask you to yell out the answer.
So count how many times the white T-shirt team
passes the ball to other players on its team.
And it's important to do this as quietly as possible.
Don't laugh, don't cough or talk
because that's going to hurt other people's concentration.
Okay. So here's our first attention deficit test.
Video: How many passes does the team in white make?
Go!
Marvin Chun: Okay, what was the answer? How many times? Thirteen? Thirteen?
Excellent, you guys have great attention and that's really fantastic.
Now some of you may have seen this video because it's on YouTube,
and it's a pretty well-known one.
But if you've never seen this video before,
please raise your hand up as high as you can.
Look around, most of you haven't seen the video.
Keep your hands up high, please.
Now there was actually something else going on in this video,
and you can lower your hands - keep your hands up please -
you can lower your hand if you saw a dancing bear.
But if you did not see the dancing bear, keep your hands up,
look around, you're not alone.
Most of you have missed a very critical part of this video.
So now you can lower your hand.
You're not alone. Let's watch the video again, no counting.
Video: How many passes does the team in white make?
As you were monitoring the white T-shirt team,
on the right, this guy in a bear suit comes out,
and he does this kind of dance. Right?
And the good majority of you, the very smart group of people,
totally missed this very obvious feature of the video. Okay?
On the one hand that means that your attention is really good,
because you did not, you know, see something
that I didn't ask you to look for.
But on the other hand, it really highlights
how limited your ability to see the world, and to experience the world, is.
And that's the point I'm trying to make with this video.
In fact, we studied this in my own laboratory at Yale
in collaboration with one of my former postdoc students, Yao Daju,
who is now a professor at Harvard University.
We conducted this study where we asked people
Just look at these shapes shown there on the left.
And we asked them to attend to the shapes,
and try to remember them for like two seconds.
And sometimes they have to remember one; sometimes they have to remember two;
sometimes they have to remember three.
People have no trouble attending to and remembering one of the objects. Okay?
And we also measured what their brains are doing
while they're looking at this task and doing this task.
And that line on the bottom with the light green
shows what happens when people are attending to,
and remembering, just one item.
The brain doesn't have to work too hard and people do super well.
They're almost perfect in the task.
But once you increase it to two items or three items,
you can see in the darker lines on the graph,
your brain has to work harder.
And not only does your brain have to work harder, the performance drops.
Even for something this simple.
Basically your brain can handle only one thing at a time.
Only one thing well at a time.
Yes, you can you can try to remember two things or three things.
but your productivity, your performance, is going to start to go down.
So let's do one more, another attention test,
just in case you missed the bear, try doing this one.
Just listen to this nice video again.
It's actually a commercial advertisement for a car,
but I think it makes good use of psychology and cognitive science.
So I'll let it speak for itself.
I don't receive any endorsements from this company.
Video: To test just how much attention
the attention-stealing design of the new Skoda Fabia actually steals,
we left one parked on this ordinary road in West London.
We wanted to see if its sharp, crystalline shapes, bold lines
and lower, wider profile would attract the desired level of attention.
Will the 17-inch black alloy wheels stop passersby in their tracks?
Will the angular headlights attract the attention of other road users?
Will a crowd gather to check out its fresh, sporty look?
But did the attention-stealing design distract you from noticing
that the entire street has been changing right before your very eyes?
Don't believe us? Have another look.
Did you spot the van changing to a taxi?
How about the scooter changing to a pair of bicycles?
Let alone the fact that the entire street is now completely different.
Marvin Chun: So hopefully I've made the point
that your brain can really only attend to, focus on, do well,
one thing at a time, one object at a time, one task at a time.
I'm now going to share three tips on how to improve your focus and attention
Tip number one is to try to simplify what you attend to. Okay?
And I'll explain that more in a moment,
because first we have to try to understand:
Why is it the case that the brain can only attend to one thing at a time?
I would like for you to think of your brain as an orchestra.
When you listen to an orchestra
you don't just focus on one instrument or one player,
you listen to the whole harmony of all the different instruments
Beautiful music comes from this synchrony and harmony and coordination
of all the different instrument pieces.
And that's exactly how the brain works as well.
And right now, again, in my laboratory
we're working on ways to measure this harmony,
and to quantify this harmony using something called functional connectivity.
And we can build models of how well people attend based on this harmony
such that what you have here on this graph over here on the X-axis
is a prediction of who's more attentive and who's less attentive.
And what we have on the Y-axis
is the actual individuals that we're predicting.
And you can see that our models do a good job.
If you listen to the entire brain,
you can predict who's going to be more attentive
and who's going to be less attentive.
In fact, these graphs allow us to even predict
symptoms for attentional deficit disorders.
So clearly people differ. Okay?
I told you that you're all limited to only attend to one thing.
But still, different people, some people,
are more focused than other people.
The people on the top right are more focused,
and can hold their attention for a longer time,
than people on the bottom left.
So what is different about all of your brains,
and how can we help you have a kind of brain that's on the top right,
that allows you to maintain focus?
So my three tips as I mentioned.
I told you that there is too much information in the environment,
then control how much information that you have to pay attention to.
If you are a company trying to sell a product, or to teach something,
or to introduce something to another person,
Likewise, as a consumer, simplify what you see.
My favorite example is this legendary introduction of the iPhone
The phone design speaks for itself.
He puts up the size of the memory, and just leaves it to the bare essentials,
so that people can focus on the important information.
If he were an amateur presenter,
he might have presented a slide like this:
Introducing the new iPhone. Revolutionary design.
And this is how some people make their slides.
It's how some companies sell their products.
But really you have to simplify,
we don't have the capacity to process so much information.
Tip number two is to relax. It's so important.
This is a very famous, old principle in psychology
called the Yerkes-Dodson curve.
And what we have here on the X-axis is arousal. Okay?
Or stress, or emotion, or focus,
it's all of that on the bottom axis, from low to high.
Of course, what we care about is the Y-axis, performance, okay?
We want to be high, show high performance.
Some people act as if the more pumped-up they are, and the harder they try,
their performance is always going to go up. Okay?
The more stressed you get, performance will go up.
But, of course, research indicates that that's not the case.
The curve is actually an upside-down U-shaped function.
So that optimal performance - yes, you need some arousal,
you need to put some effort into any task,
and then you hit your peak performance.
But if you put too much effort in, or you are over aroused,
then your performance is going to drop over on the far right
So that's a very important principle in attention research.
Of course, that's a whole other TED talk, on how to relax.
I'm just going to share two quick sub tips for that.
One is to don't forget to breathe, as basic as that sounds.
But if you're feeling stressed or even if you're not feeling stressed,
We're going to take a deep breath in for about 5 to 10 seconds.
make the air come all the way down to the bottom of your lungs
Can't you feel the clarity in your brain happening when you do that?
When you engage in deep breathing, it will actually help you relax.
And another point is that in order to breathe deeply
No one's going to do this deep breath
while they're jumping up and down or doing some kind of weird exercise.
And so that's, I think, one very simple and free tip you can have
Meditation, prayer, yoga,
there are many other ways to relax as well.
The second thing I'll share on the topic of relaxation
is maybe a surprising one, or maybe it's not.
There's actually a ton of research
showing that taking a walk is very beneficial, not only for your mood,
but also for your attention, for your cognitive skills.
And importantly, it's important to take a walk in a park
or a place where there are trees,
where there's greenery, where there's a green environment.
- and this is work done by Berman and Jonides at the University of Michigan -
compare walking in a city versus walking in a park or walking in a forest,
people who walk in a forest are not only more relaxed and happier,
but they actually show improved attention and focus
after they return from their walk.
So just a little plug for taking a walk after lunch.
and this is probably the most important tip I want to share with you
because I think there's a ton of research
that is counterintuitive to people.
People think: "In order to be productive, I need to multitask.
I need to do more things at any given time."
But that's actually opposite to everything I just told you
Your brain works better when it's unitasking,
when it's only doing one thing at a time. Okay?
How many of you check your phones when you're studying,
or when you're doing something important
like writing a report or making an important plan?
How many of you check your phones when you do that?
Everyone checks their phones right?
How many of you check your phones more than one or two times an hour?
Yes, all of your hands are still up. Okay?
Psychology and neuroscience research suggests
that that's not a very efficient way to work.
I think this is an important demonstration.
I'm going to show a list of numbers on the left.
If the number is blue, add seven; if the number is pink, subtract seven.
Then move on to the next number.
You're going down the list as fast as you can.
Add seven if it's blue, and just subtract seven if it's red,
and move on to the next number.
When you're done just clap your hands so I know when people are finished.
Okay? It's clear instructions. Add seven or subtract seven.
Okay. I am hearing some claps.
When you're done clap your hands quickly.
Okay. Great. So, you're pretty much done.
Let's just do it one more time.
Now the list on the on the right.
If it's blue add seven; if it's pink subtract seven.
And then you can clap at the end of the list.
Much harder isn't it? It's much harder.
that these two lists are the same.
The same number of addition problems, the same number of subtraction problems.
But on the left you're unitasking,
doing a bunch of addition and then only switching once to do subtraction.
On the right you're multitasking. Okay?
So when you're studying or working while checking your phone,
you're doing stuff on the right,
you're making your job harder for yourself.
And if you'd like to test this in the laboratory,
on the right you're going to be 30% slower and going to be 30% less accurate,
and your brain has to work harder.
It's like exercising wearing a big heavy backpack.
Why would you handicap yourself
if you can unitask like we showed you here on the left?
It's to try to unitask to improve your focus and productivity.
It's okay to check your phone;
just do it after you've finished working for 30 minutes or an hour as a reward.
Don't check it every five minutes.
Don't check your emails every five minutes,
don't check your Facebook every five minutes.
So in conclusion, my three tips for improving focus and attention are:
I guarantee that the research indicates that your productivity will go up
and it may even make you smarter.
(Applause)