Mental attention, she notes, is selective. Like a flashlight beam, we aim our consciousness on but a thin slice of what surrounds us. At a party, for instance, we hear only one voice among many until another voice speaks our name and our attention suddenly shifts.
I find myself to be much the opposite. I have trouble focusing on on any one conversation, I'm too easily distracted. I can't hold a phone call or conversation while a TV is playing at similar volume. In a restaurant, I feel like I hear all conversations and the music, and I can't seem to shut them out. It's not that I'm listening to all the conversations, but I hear them, and it makes focusing on the conversation I'm trying to hold difficult.
With programming and reading, however, I do find that I can shut out background noise, and I suspect this is because it's a different kind of thinking than what distractions around would be causing.
I suspect that because the attention is given to a mode of thought (reading, programming), and that that mode is not competing with other forms of the same mode (I'm not trying to read two books simultaneously), that this enables someone (or maybe just me, I dunno) to shut off the other senses. While with listening and hearing multiple conversations, it's like trying to read and having random words getting thrown into the sentences you're reading.
I know what you mean - I have the same problem. For me, it's worst with television: I can't have a conversation with someone if there's a TV on in the same room. I'm not sure if this is the opposite to the flashlight simile, or just an example of an inability to direct it at will.
Well, television (particularly ad-supported television) is actively trying over and over to grab your attention, so it's not terribly surprising. I have a hard time focusing when there's a tv in line-of-sight, too, and it gets worse when I haven't watched broadcast tv for a while.
I remember hearing somebody (Douglas Rushkoff, I think) suggest that ADD-like behaviors might be an adaptation to a childhood in which one is inundated with aggressive, flashy advertising. Adapting to reflexively ignoring things that are designed to steal your focus probably affects your brain in the long term, much like meditating regularly can.
Interestingly, I find that this tends to affect the men of my family more than the women. My mom, sister, and wife don't seem to have this problem at all. While both my dad and brother all suffer from an inability to hold a conversation if the TV is on.
I have the same problem, so I've had to do things to cope with it. Fortunately, I have an office with a door at my work now, and that helps tremendously. At home I have a room to work in where I can shut the door and not hear the TV. When I need to concentrate, I shut down the Twitter, E-mail, and IM clients, and any other things on my computer that might be distracting. I only run programs related to the task at hand.
I have also found that a daily time of quiet prayer and meditation is helpful. If you don't believe in prayer, some other kind of meditation will probably help, too. Lately I've been incorporating MP3s from pray-as-you-go.org, which are very well done short sessions of Ignatian guided meditation incorporating beautiful music.
Foreground versus background processes probably makes a better metaphor. It is possible to truly multitask, beyond just franticly switching focus -- we do it when we drive or play sports -- but only one task actually has focus. The rest runs in the background. Learning to control that ability is a great way to manage your time and attention.
I'm pretty helpless with group conversations, too. I guess conversation uses a lot of different aspects of attention, so you can't just fire off background tasks for listening to music and each conversation.
As for the people who can do concurrent conversations -- I think they're very good at filling in the gaps of each conversation that they miss. If each conversation is mostly small talk and little stories, you can lose a few words from each sentence and still follow along, especially if you can pick up on voice inflection and body language in your background tasks (as our more socially adept girlfriends and sisters seem to).
I find myself to be much the opposite. I have trouble focusing on on any one conversation, I'm too easily distracted. I can't hold a phone call or conversation while a TV is playing at similar volume. In a restaurant, I feel like I hear all conversations and the music, and I can't seem to shut them out. It's not that I'm listening to all the conversations, but I hear them, and it makes focusing on the conversation I'm trying to hold difficult.
With programming and reading, however, I do find that I can shut out background noise, and I suspect this is because it's a different kind of thinking than what distractions around would be causing.
I suspect that because the attention is given to a mode of thought (reading, programming), and that that mode is not competing with other forms of the same mode (I'm not trying to read two books simultaneously), that this enables someone (or maybe just me, I dunno) to shut off the other senses. While with listening and hearing multiple conversations, it's like trying to read and having random words getting thrown into the sentences you're reading.