Saturday, October 29, 2011

Distraction

I've recently started thinking about how my brain works.  Not how the neurons and other brain matter works, because I have no idea about any of that.  Rather, I've been thinking about how I think about things.  Thinkception, you could say.  I'm in an Educational Psychology class that has presented a few ways people think we develop and learn, and I find it quite fascinating.  It got me to examine my actions and thoughts as I'm sitting in a classroom or elsewhere.  And turns out, I'm a noisy learner.

Seriously, I just cannot sit still.  I learn pretty well from lectures while taking notes, and I think my body is just letting everyone else know that my mind is absorbing away.  Usually, this comes in the form of leg tapping, pencil spinning, etc.  I get in some pretty weird poses, too, if I'm not sitting at an uncomfortable desk.  This carries over to really any time I don't have anything to do with myself, i.e. standing at work or waiting for someone in my car.

This restlessness also applies to my mind when motivation is lacking.  Specifically, when an assignment is first given, I just can't get myself to buckle down and do it.  Instead, I wait until the night before it's due, literally, and do it then.  When I'm motivated, I can go through most assignments pretty quickly, but I struggle to find the motivation.  It rarely has staying power, too, especially when I have easy access to the internet, like when I'm typing a paper.  So I find myself working in 5 to 10 minute chunks on papers.  Which is not conducive to linear thinking or writing.

Speaking of linear thinking, I've found myself unable to fully focus on a topic for extended periods of time without some serious effort.  Even in the middle of a conversation, I start thinking about something entirely unrelated and start talking about that, often forgetting to go back to the original topic.  Or I forget the original topic after going on a tangent and can't pick up the conversation where I wandered off.  So who's got some advice for staying on task or getting motivation early in an assignment?

2 comments:

  1. FYI, thinking about thinking is called metacognition. I think I know what's happening. Your pistons are misfiring. haha jk. I think it happens to everyone. You're doing assignments that are annoying and feel irrelevant. When you start writing lesson plans you'll actually be teaching, it makes a difference :)

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