Where in Your Brain Does Attention come from?
If you understand the science of the brain, you can understand how to repair your attention
This is Part 3 in a series about rehabilitating my own attention.
You can read Part 1 and Part 2 here.
Is Attention just Right Brain thinking?
All this talk about 'attention' reminds me of a time I wanted to learn how to draw.
I am a mediocre artist at best.
But I always did envy my friends who could sketch and draw.
There is something magical about being able to create something out of thin air, with nothing but a pencil and a scrap piece of paper. My artist friends recommended to the book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards.
In the book, there is a famous exercise involving upside-down drawing
You can do this yourself to see:
Take a piece of paper and try to draw the left image.
If you're a beginner, and you try to draw the image on the left, it will be struggle. Your hand won't cooperate with what you're trying to do.
But simply flip the image around and try again. Draw the image on the right.
It will take you longer to do, but when you complete it, you'll be surprised at how good your drawing actually looks!
Why does drawing upside down work?
The short answer is it works because you are not solving, but you are just observing.
When the image is upright, your brain says, "That's a person in a chair! Okay. Let's draw a person in a chair."
But flip it around, and suddenly your brain goes, "That's a weird squiggly line, and I'm just drawing a squiggly line."1
You're not solving, you're just observing.
This was a revelation to me.
I wrote in Part 1 about how I love to travel. The newness and unfamiliarity of visiting a place makes me more present and more observant.
On the other hand, the familiarity of home makes my brain go "I already know what that is!"
Travel opens me up.
That’s why this one exercise in "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" was a revelation to me.
It was the first time I experienced that open-mindedness, curiosity, and "slow brain" without having to leave the four walls of my house. I wasn't traveling, I was just at home. But I still felt like I was wandering and exploring.
I never did finish the book.
Or learn to draw.
But that book changed the way I think about thinking. And today I'll build that to think about attention.
Attention exists in our "right brain"
Left-brain right-brain ideas are a bit old-fashioned, but is still used sometimes to distinguish between a more rational problem-solving approach (associated with left brain). Versus a more creative, open, and exploring approach (right brain) 2
I don’t know if this is exactly what Simone Weil meant when she talked about attention. But it feels similar, or at least it feels right to me.
If the goal is not to solve problems and find solutions (left brain) but to be present and open to questions (right brain), then it makes sense to practice right brain activity in any way possible.
So when someone says that art, drawing, or music can make you a better person- that can mean that exercising your "right brain" builds up the muscles that help you pay attention.
This makes me wonder:
"What kind of activities can work?"
"Why don't we do those activities more often?"
"How does society, church, or institutions make it harder (or easier) to pay attention?"
For more on how this works in our brains, check out Drawing upside down]
More on this here: Left Brain, Right Brain: An Outdated Argument – Yale Scientific Magazine