As you’re reading this, what else are you doing?

Maybe you’re drinking a cup of coffee, talking on the phone, thinking about what you really ought to be doing instead of reading this, flicking between windows or tabs on your internet browser?

On Monday evening, Tom and I were driving behind a car that seemed a little lost. At least, I found myself trying to guess what was happening to the driver inside the car, because he kept slowing down, speeding up and meandering all over the road in front of us.

Hopefully, the driver wasn’t drunk. Perhaps he was making a call on his mobile. Probaby, he was lost and trying to process information about his location and where he needed to be at the same time as driving.

If you drive, I’m sure you’ve probably seen similar examples. You may even have found yourself getting, well… let’s just say, ahem, a little annoyed at such displays. It’s an interesting reminder of just how much cognitive effort it can require to bring our attention to two – or perhaps many – things at once: choosing a driving direction and having a conversation with the other person in the car, for example.

Maybe you know someone who has the rather annoying habit of tuning out of the conversation that you are having right here with them in order to listen to someone else’s conversation over there?

Psyblog had an interesting article the other day on this phenomenon of attention, which it calls ‘The cocktail party effect.’ We are extremely good at tuning in to one voice out of a crowded room full of voices. There is even evidence to suggest that we might do this by rejecting what we are hearing with one ear and focusing on what we are hearing in the other ear. You may like to read the original article for references on this.

The embarrassment comes because, as researchers found, we very often do not hear a single word of the voices that we have tuned out. So if you are tuning out your friend who is standing next to you in order to eavesdrop on another conversation across the room, the chances are that you will not remember anything that your friend has said to you about ther difficult day or their painful divorce.

Of course, this experiment looked at our ability to consciously process and recall the tuned-out voices. It tells us nothing about what might be happening subconsciously.

But it is certainly the case, isn’t it, that people distracted by trying to focus on too many things at once can create danger on the roads and extreme irritation at cocktail parties.

I was pondering on all this and it occurred to me that many people consult me and work with me therapeutically because they need to let go of stuff that has been hanging around for them in order to free up their attention to move forwards with their lives. And many people choose to work with a therapist because they know that, in the therapy session, they will have a safe space where they can be fully seen and heard. The therapist will not, let’s hope, be day-dreaming off into the corner, or talking to someone else on the phone.

As people, we really need to be heard and seen, fully and supportively. Listening, really listening to someone with your full attention, is a wonderful skill to develop.

Driving with your full attention on the road ahead is also quite useful.

And what if we were all to slow down for a few minutes each day, perhaps close our eyes or focus on one still point in the room, just notice our breathing and allow our attention to rest, perhaps imagine breathing in calm on the in-breath and breathing away anything unhelpful on the out-breath.. breathing away our restlessness, frustration, anger, distractedness, whatever it is that is unhelpfully occupying our attention right now… what then?