This is part 5 in an arc on attention and cognition based on comments from two readers, Brad Berens and "Frequent Reader". Part 1 started this arc by describing how I was allowing myself to get distracted. Part 2 dealt with Lapses of Consciousness.
Part 3 went into detail about these lapses and introduced the concept of invalid task-switching as a way the non-conscious mind works to get our attention and Part 4 covered discussed some of the non-conscious' methods.
Here we share more of the non-conscious' methods and what its goal really is.
Silly, harmless things. Yet so revealing. My non-conscious was causing me to do things which required minimal conscious attention. My brain, if you will, was forcing me to give my mind a chance to relax before system failure occurred.
Others have reported going for long drives to nowhere in particular, waking up and "spontaneously" taking a mental-health day from work (when we heard this from people I asked if they could remember their dreams from the night before. Some could and the responses were fascinating, very primal, very archetypal), all harmless and trivial and required for the conscious mind to reintegrate, to determine which of the many tasks it had taken on were worth its attention and shedding those that it realized weren't of great import.
This is still very preliminary and I haven't had a chance to read the book Brad recommends in his blog post and in his comment on my blog. Even so, these preliminary findings do have an impact on information design and especially how and where people focus their attention on the web.
(More to follow...)
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
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