The battle for attention will be the one this current generation will die trying to win. Attention, as commercial value, has bartered and traded our brains, for big money and deep pockets. My latest read has brought me back to Cal Newport’s book, titled ‘Deep Work,’ starting off with simple reasoning as to why distraction, or low quality concentration has impacts on high bar, skill learning. In my other findings, digital screen distraction is just as much as a poorly valued “skill” as any other, the brain just doesn’t really identify them any differently, that in itself is an entirely different issue. Consider here that what’s at stake are actual real-world skills, not just hitting the chatbots or running a quick Google search and calling it a day. This bit touches on the science of neurons in our brains, and how skills become ingrained, specifically the role that myelin plays in it:
Daniel Coyle’s ‘The Talent Code’ on Myelin–a layer of fatty tissue that grows around neurons, acting like an insulator that allows the cells to fire faster and cleaner.
This new science of performance argues that you get better at a skill as you develop more myelin around the relevant neurons, allowing the corresponding circuit to fire more effortlessly and effectively. To be great at something is to be well myelinated.
By focusing intensely on a specific skill, you’re forcing the specific relevant circuit to fire, again and again, in isolation. This repetitive use of a specific circuit triggers cells called oliodendrocytes to begin wrapping layers of myelin around the neurons in the circuits–effectively cementing the skill. The reason, therefore, why it’s important to focus intensely on the task at hand while avoiding distraction is because this is the only way to isolate the relevant neural circuit enough to trigger useful myelination. By contrast, if you’re trying to learn a complex new skill in a state of low concentration, you’re firing too many circuits simultaneously and haphazardly to isolate the group of neurons you actually want to strengthen.
Excerpts taken from Cal Newport’s – Deep Work