Mental Traps_ The Overthinker's Guide to a Happier Life - Andre Kukla [32]
Now the commonest motive for trying to do two things at once is a desire to expedite our work. By dividing attention, we hope to complete two tasks in the time it would ordinarily take to complete just one. But since we have to think our conscious thoughts one at a time, this procedure can never save us any steps. There are four As and four Bs to work our way through, regardless of the order they’re taken in. On the other hand, when we oscillate away from thought stream A, we can’t expect to pick it up again exactly where we left off. We have to pick up the threads of the abandoned project. The interpolated activity B having distracted us, we must at least remind ourselves of the last conclusions before we are able to proceed. Often we need to repeat entire sequences of thought whose conclusion had already been arrived at. When attention is divided, we are returned again and again to the same starting point, from which place we must again and again rethink the same ideas. A more accurate portrayal of divided thought would be:
A1, A2, B1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, A2, A3, A4, B3, B4
Clearly it would be less arduous to do it like this:
A1, A2, A3, A4, B1, B2, B3, B4
Or like this:
B1, B2, B3, B4, A1, A2, A3, A4
This is why division is a trap.
Alternatively, the attempt to do two things at once may cause us to proceed with one of them at the unconscious level. We invest our private problem with continuous attention and fall into a pattern of automatic responding to someone we are conversing with: we smile and nod our head at everything he tells us. So long as the second task is thoroughly familiar and predictable, we will come to no harm. Some conversational partners never require more of us than an occasional token of approval. But if the course of events takes an unexpected turn, we may find ourselves in serious difficulties. We drive home with our mental gear in automatic, and the car in front of us screeches to a sudden halt. The bland spouter of conventionalities accuses us of wishing him dead, and we smile and nod our head.
Nevertheless, we must automatize some of our activities or else we could never do more than breathe. Unconsciousness per se is not an error. The trap is to try to do two things at once when we know that both of them require conscious attention. For then we can avoid the inefficiency of a mixed stream of thought only by the even less satisfactory route of letting our work on one of the tasks fall below the level of consciousness.
The fall from consciousness due to division is especially unfortunate when one of our activities is taken up for the sake of pleasure. In this case, we aren’t so concerned with getting to the end as efficiently as possible. We don’t mind having to take longer than necessary to eat a delicious dinner. But pleasure can’t be relished without consciousness. If we try to think about our work while we’re eating, we won’t notice the taste of our food. Even if we manage to sustain a mixed stream, alternately paying attention to work and to pleasure, our pleasure will be reduced. And we won’t do our best work.
Division is usually a secondary complication arising out of a previous case of anticipation or resistance, as pneumonia may develop from a cold. We enter into the divided state by taking on a second project before finishing or setting aside something already begun. We’re busy with our algebra homework, but our thoughts begin to drift toward the romantic encounter we have planned for later in the evening. Now either the homework is more important to us right now, or romance is more important. We may decide this issue any way we wish. If getting the homework done now takes precedence over expediting our love life, we’re guilty of anticipation. And if romance is an immediate imperative, we’re