Picture this scenario as happening at your home or in your neighbourhood. Imagine two teens — one practising the violin and the other kicking the ball into the goal post. What do you see ? Do you see focus, undivided attention, or relaxation etched on their faces?
In the first, the teen is likely in a focused mode and the latter in a more diffuse way.
Have you, as a student, been chastised by your teacher for daydreaming and asking you to concentrate in the class? If so, you may likely have gone into a diffuse mode.
Both children and adults are constantly pursuing deep focus and a natural flow in what they do. While adults envisage a tangible outcome due to their deep work and focus, children naturally gravitate into a diffuse mode as the outcome may not be actual results but the joy of exploration.
While Academic learning intends to tap into this potential, factors such as the pressure of studying, the curricular design may affect one’s ability to tap into the treasure trove of imagination and exploration.
Students may gradually experience studies as more rigid, and they start losing the joy and fun learning provides.
In my many conversations with parents of children and teens, I often hear that while they are proud that their child excels at sports, drawing or dance, they just wish their child was more focused and attentive in studies.
Both focused and diffuse modes of thinking are equally valuable; what is more important is the harmony between them.
Professor Barbara Oakley, in her book, Learning how to learn, emphasizes that our brain has to go back and forth between focused and diffuse modes to learn effectively.
To better understand focused and diffuse modes, let us think of an eagle flying high in the sky. The eagle keeps circling or may perch atop a hill or a tree, scanning the horizon for a long time. Then the eagle swoops in to pick its prey, and it happens in few seconds. It is almost as if the eagle is alternating between focused and diffuse modes.
In the diffuse mode, one can take in everything in the environment, see the big picture, and think freely. In the focused mode, you give complete attention to the work at hand.
One of the videos that show the stark contrast between a focused mode and diffuse mode is a 2004 Reykjavik Rapid chess tournament between Magnus Carlsen, then 13-year-old and the legendary chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov . It is fascinating to watch the man who has won many matches in a wholly focused mode, getting frustrated at times and Carlsen, strolling off to watch the other games. To a casual onlooker, it may look as if Carlsen was distracted. It could also be that he was accessing a diffuse mode.
Let us go back to the scene of the two teenagers, one practising a violin and the other kicking the ball into the goal post. What happens when they are not able to get the note right or not scoring the goal? When it happens repeatedly, they get stuck. When they are stuck, they get frustrated and lose interest in what they are doing.
Does the same not happen with us as adults when we work and cannot solve a particular problem at work? And it is the same thing that happens when students get stuck when learning. When they do not understand what they have learned, they become frustrated trying to understand and find it boring.
Suppose you are a parent or an educator looking for ways to help students learn effectively or an adult exploring valuable ways to learn; 3 simple strategies can help effective learning:
1. Shine the spotlight on what is most important and pay attention to it:
People learn quickly when they know the relevance and importance of what they learn. Understanding the purpose of why one is learning a particular topic and how it is helpful in their day to day life can arouse interest in the learner. One way to do that is by saying to oneself, “This topic is important to learn because ….”
An 8-year old boy asked me, “Why do I have to learn history? It is about dead people and the wars they fought. I am not interested to know who fought whom?” I narrated a story about King Ashoka and asked him to share three lessons from the story. He was able to come up with more than three lessons that he got from the story. Then he said, “Maybe history is not about wars, but lessons for us from those wars.” He now had a new reason to learn history.
2. Know learning techniques that work for you:
Like there are hundreds of diets globally, we know that all of them may not work for us. Similarly, there are thousands of learning techniques on learning effectively, but not everything may work for you.
How do you know what works for you and what doesn’t? Some learn effectively by staying focused for short bursts of time, like 20–30 minutes and then taking a break and then coming back to learn again. The break is when you go into a diffuse mode. Others mix up subjects or topics to learn and focus on only one topic or subject at a time. Some others may use blocked practice to focus on one subject for a more extended period and learn it thoroughly before moving on to the next topic.
Whichever technique you choose, I would like you to try it more than once or twice and then discard as not working.
3. Use the suitable diffuse mode activators:
Has it happened that you work in a focused mode for some time and then want to relax for few minutes, so you reach for your phone to browse social media for a few minutes, and the next thing you know, two hours have passed? I have been a victim of this many times.
One parent shared, “I allow my son to watch TV for 10 minutes if he studies for 1 hour. He finds it very difficult to get back, and his focus is lost.”
Our brains aren’t designed to maintain laser focus indefinitely. We need to get into the diffuse mode by taking productive breaks such as going for a walk, maybe playing short physical games, drawing, painting, taking a bath, listening to music, and the ultimate activator is taking a nap.
Remember the ‘Eureka Moment’ when Archimedes made his remarkable discovery while bathing in a tub. Browsing social media or watching TV series may shift the focus from one area to another and are not really taking us into the diffuse mode.
So, next time you are learning, become aware if you are in the focused mode or diffuse mode. If you are too focused and are stuck, how about getting into a diffuse mode and access your own “Eureka Moment”?
