WEBVTT

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For me, smart living has to start
with being productive.

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How many of you
would like to be more productive?

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If you are a student,
you would like to get better grades

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without having to work harder.

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If you have a job, you want to be
more productive in your work,

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you want to gain
more recognition for your work,

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without having to put more hours,

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because everyone has
the same twenty-four hours a day.

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And there are many ways
to be more productive.

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But the one way that
I'm going to talk about in my session

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is how you can improve your focus,
and how you can improve your attention,

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and what psychology and neuroscience

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have to say to improve
your focus and attention.

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The big challenge that faces all of us,
especially in modern society,

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is that there's too much information.

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It's both a blessing, but also a curse,

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that we have access
to infinite amounts of information;

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all the knowledge
that has been produced by humankind

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is at the end of your thumbs
just by opening up your phone.

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And again it's a huge privilege,

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and we're very lucky
to be in this kind of era.

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But on the other hand,

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it's very hard to choose, and it's very
hard to decide where to start,

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because we are constantly confronted
with too much information.

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Secondly, we also distract ourselves.
It's hard to focus on our own.

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One good example is that you commonly see
people walking down the street

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with their eyes glued to their phone.

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And, of course, they're somewhat
oblivious to their surroundings.

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See he's coming to the door and boom,

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he just hits the door,
walks right into it.

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In the next video is a woman walking
in a mall checking out her cell phone.

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And you can see that she fell
straight into that fountain.

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Okay? So, you know,
we distract ourselves all the time,

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making us oblivious to our surroundings.

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These are comical examples,

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but, of course, there are
more serious dangerous examples.

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For instance, if you're driving a train,
an engineer driving a train,

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and you lose your focus
for even just a few seconds,

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then if you don't slow down your speed

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your train is going to run off
the tracks to very dangerous effect.

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So these are just a few examples
of how we are overloaded with information

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and how we distract ourselves.

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And so the question is:
How can we improve our focus?

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We are living in what John Cassidy
of "The New Yorker" magazine

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calls the "attention deficit
disorder economy"

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or the "attention deficit
disorder society."

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And the consequences of that
we're still trying to understand.

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We know that it means
that we're a little less focused,

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more distracted, we may be more shallow.

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This overwhelming information
may make us less productive.

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And as I just pointed out over here,
it can also lead to dangerous situations.

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The economic cost of attention deficit

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has been estimated to be even up to about
$200 billion in the United States alone.

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These are serious problems
that affect our productivity.

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So here's an example.

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I want to see how well you can attend
at the beginning of my talk.

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This is a video, and your task is
to focus on the team with white clothes

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and ignore the team
with black clothes, Okay?

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They're going to run around the screen,

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and your task is to count

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how many times they're passing the ball
to other players on the screen,

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other white players,
white T-shirt players, on the screen.

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Okay, count it quietly in your head,

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and then at the end I'm going to ask you
to yell out the answer.

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So count how many times
the white T-shirt team

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passes the ball to other
players on its team.

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And it's important to do this
as quietly as possible.

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Don't laugh, don't cough or talk

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because that's going to hurt
other people's concentration.

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Okay. So here's our first
attention deficit test.

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Here we go. One, two, three.

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Video: How many passes
does the team in white make?

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Go!

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Marvin Chun: Okay, what was the answer?
How many times? Thirteen? Thirteen?

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Excellent, you guys have great attention
and that's really fantastic.

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We're off to a good start.

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Now some of you may have seen this video
because it's on YouTube,

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and it's a pretty well-known one.

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But if you've never seen
this video before,

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please raise your hand up
as high as you can.

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Look around, most of you
haven't seen the video.

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Keep your hands up high, please.

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Now there was actually
something else going on in this video,

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and you can lower your hands
- keep your hands up please -

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you can lower your hand
if you saw a dancing bear.

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But if you did not see the dancing bear,
keep your hands up,

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look around, you're not alone.

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Most of you have missed
a very critical part of this video.

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So now you can lower your hand.

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You're not alone.
Let's watch the video again, no counting.

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Just watch the video now.

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Okay so now no counting.

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Video: How many passes
does the team in white make?

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Marvin Chun: And just watch.

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As you were monitoring
the white T-shirt team,

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on the right, this guy
in a bear suit comes out,

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and he does this kind of dance. Right?

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And then moonwalks out.

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And the good majority of you,
the very smart group of people,

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totally missed this very obvious
feature of the video. Okay?

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On the one hand that means
that your attention is really good,

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because you did not, you know,
see something

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that I didn't ask you to look for.

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But on the other hand,
it really highlights

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how limited your ability to see the world,
and to experience the world, is.

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Our brains are limited.

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And that's the point
I'm trying to make with this video.

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In fact, we studied this
in my own laboratory at Yale

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in collaboration with one of my former
postdoc students, Yao Daju,

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who is now a professor
at Harvard University.

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We conducted this study
where we asked people

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to do something very simple:

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Just look at these shapes
shown there on the left.

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And we asked them to attend to the shapes,

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and try to remember them
for like two seconds.

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And sometimes they have to remember one;
sometimes they have to remember two;

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sometimes they have to remember three.

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Very simple task.

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People have no trouble attending to
and remembering one of the objects. Okay?

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And we also measured
what their brains are doing

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while they're looking at this task
and doing this task.

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And that line on the bottom
with the light green

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shows what happens when
people are attending to,

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and remembering, just one item.

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The brain doesn't have to work too hard
and people do super well.

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They're almost perfect in the task.

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But once you increase it
to two items or three items,

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you can see in the darker lines
on the graph,

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your brain has to work harder.

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And not only does your brain have to
work harder, the performance drops.

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People start making mistakes.

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Even for something this simple.

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Basically your brain can
handle only one thing at a time.

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Only one thing well at a time.

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Yes, you can you can try to remember
two things or three things.

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You're capable of doing it,

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but your productivity, your performance,
is going to start to go down.

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So let's do one more,
another attention test,

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just in case you missed the bear,
try doing this one.

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Just listen to this nice video again.

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It's actually a commercial
advertisement for a car,

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but I think it makes good use
of psychology and cognitive science.

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So I'll let it speak for itself.

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I don't receive any endorsements
from this company.

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But here we go.

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Video: To test
just how much attention

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the attention-stealing design
of the new Skoda Fabia actually steals,

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we left one parked on this
ordinary road in West London.

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We wanted to see if its sharp,
crystalline shapes, bold lines

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and lower, wider profile would attract
the desired level of attention.

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Will the 17-inch black alloy wheels
stop passersby in their tracks?

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Will the angular headlights
attract the attention of other road users?

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Will a crowd gather to check out
its fresh, sporty look?

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Well not quite.

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But did the attention-stealing design
distract you from noticing

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that the entire street has been changing
right before your very eyes?

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Don't believe us? Have another look.

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Did you spot the van changing to a taxi?

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How about the scooter
changing to a pair of bicycles?

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Or the lady holding a pig?

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Let alone the fact that the entire street
is now completely different.

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Didn't think so?

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Marvin Chun: So hopefully
I've made the point

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that your brain can really only attend to,
focus on, do well,

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one thing at a time, one object at a time,
one task at a time.

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And so with that background

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I'm now going to share three tips
on how to improve your focus and attention

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given these limitations.

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Tip number one is to try to simplify
what you attend to. Okay?

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And I'll explain that more in a moment,

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because first we have
to try to understand:

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Why is it the case that the brain
can only attend to one thing at a time?

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I would like for you
to think of your brain as an orchestra.

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Okay? It's like an orchestra.

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When you listen to an orchestra

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you don't just focus on one instrument
or one player,

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you listen to the whole harmony
of all the different instruments

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coming in and out.

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Beautiful music comes from this synchrony
and harmony and coordination

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of all the different instrument pieces.

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And that's exactly
how the brain works as well.

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And right now, again, in my laboratory

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we're working on ways
to measure this harmony,

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and to quantify this harmony using
something called functional connectivity.

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And we can build models of how well
people attend based on this harmony

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such that what you have here
on this graph over here on the X-axis

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is a prediction of who's more attentive
and who's less attentive.

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And what we have on the Y-axis

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is the actual individuals
that we're predicting.

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And you can see that
our models do a good job.

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If you listen to the entire brain,

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you can predict who's
going to be more attentive

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and who's going to be less attentive.

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In fact, these graphs
allow us to even predict

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symptoms for attentional
deficit disorders.

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So clearly people differ. Okay?

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I told you that you're all limited
to only attend to one thing.

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But still, different people, some people,

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are more focused than other people.

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The people on the top right
are more focused,

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and can hold their attention
for a longer time,

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than people on the bottom left.

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So what is different
about all of your brains,

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and how can we help you have
a kind of brain that's on the top right,

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that allows you to maintain focus?

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So my three tips as I mentioned.

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My first tip is: simplify.

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I told you that there is
too much information in the environment,

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then control how much information
that you have to pay attention to.

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If you are a company trying to
sell a product, or to teach something,

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or to introduce something
to another person,

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simplify your message.

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Likewise, as a consumer,
simplify what you see.

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My favorite example is
this legendary introduction of the iPhone

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by the past Steve Jobs.

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The phone design speaks for itself.

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He puts the price up.

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He puts up the size of the memory,
and just leaves it to the bare essentials,

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so that people can focus
on the important information.

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If he were an amateur presenter,

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he might have presented a slide like this:

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Introducing the new iPhone.
Revolutionary design.

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And this is how some people
make their slides.

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It's how some companies
sell their products.

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But really you have to simplify,

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because consumers, all of us,

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we don't have the capacity
to process so much information.

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Tip number two is to relax.
It's so important.

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This is a very famous,
old principle in psychology

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called the Yerkes-Dodson curve.

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And what we have here
on the X-axis is arousal. Okay?

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Or stress, or emotion, or focus,

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it's all of that on the bottom axis,
from low to high.

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Of course, what we care about
is the Y-axis, performance, okay?

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We want to be high, show high performance.

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Some people act as if the more pumped-up
they are, and the harder they try,

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their performance is always
going to go up. Okay?

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The more stressed you get,
performance will go up.

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Some people think that.

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But, of course, research indicates
that that's not the case.

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The curve is actually
an upside-down U-shaped function.

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So that optimal performance -
yes, you need some arousal,

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you need to put some effort into any task,

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and then you hit your peak performance.

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But if you put too much effort in,
or you are over aroused,

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then your performance is going
to drop over on the far right

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So that's a very important principle
in attention research.

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So how do you relax?

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Of course, that's a whole other TED talk,
on how to relax.

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I'm just going to share
two quick sub tips for that.

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One is to don't forget to breathe,
as basic as that sounds.

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But if you're feeling stressed
or even if you're not feeling stressed,

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it's really good to breathe.

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So let's try it once here.

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We're going to take a deep breath in
for about 5 to 10 seconds.

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Just breathe in,

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make the air come all the way down
to the bottom of your lungs

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and then exhale very slowly.

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Okay. Very good.

00:14:39.399 --> 00:14:44.559
Can't you feel the clarity
in your brain happening when you do that?

00:14:44.583 --> 00:14:46.209
It makes two points.

00:14:46.230 --> 00:14:50.853
When you engage in deep breathing,
it will actually help you relax.

00:14:50.880 --> 00:14:53.823
And another point is that
in order to breathe deeply

00:14:53.839 --> 00:14:55.809
you actually have to relax.

00:14:55.821 --> 00:14:57.642
No one's going to do this deep breath

00:14:57.655 --> 00:15:01.286
while they're jumping up and down
or doing some kind of weird exercise.

00:15:01.291 --> 00:15:05.879
And so that's, I think, one very simple
and free tip you can have

00:15:05.896 --> 00:15:08.387
to try to help relaxing.

00:15:08.430 --> 00:15:10.651
Meditation, prayer, yoga,

00:15:10.694 --> 00:15:12.746
there are many other ways
to relax as well.

00:15:12.746 --> 00:15:15.516
The second thing I'll share
on the topic of relaxation

00:15:15.516 --> 00:15:19.863
is maybe a surprising one,
or maybe it's not.

00:15:19.863 --> 00:15:22.184
But exercise is really great.

00:15:22.184 --> 00:15:24.506
And taking walks is huge.

00:15:24.506 --> 00:15:26.281
There's actually a ton of research

00:15:26.304 --> 00:15:30.907
showing that taking a walk is
very beneficial, not only for your mood,

00:15:30.907 --> 00:15:34.881
but also for your attention,
for your cognitive skills.

00:15:34.890 --> 00:15:38.194
And importantly, it's important
to take a walk in a park

00:15:38.214 --> 00:15:39.895
or a place where there are trees,

00:15:39.895 --> 00:15:43.086
where there's greenery,
where there's a green environment.

00:15:43.107 --> 00:15:44.976
So, if you take two groups

00:15:44.980 --> 00:15:48.600
- and this is work done by Berman and
Jonides at the University of Michigan -

00:15:48.613 --> 00:15:50.036
if you take two groups,

00:15:50.049 --> 00:15:54.900
compare walking in a city versus walking
in a park or walking in a forest,

00:15:55.120 --> 00:15:58.970
people who walk in a forest
are not only more relaxed and happier,

00:15:58.970 --> 00:16:02.658
but they actually show
improved attention and focus

00:16:02.669 --> 00:16:05.050
after they return from their walk.

00:16:05.079 --> 00:16:09.128
So just a little plug
for taking a walk after lunch.

00:16:09.953 --> 00:16:12.560
My final tip is unitasking,

00:16:12.560 --> 00:16:16.066
and this is probably the most
important tip I want to share with you

00:16:16.066 --> 00:16:18.036
because I think
there's a ton of research

00:16:18.036 --> 00:16:19.870
that is counterintuitive to people.

00:16:19.870 --> 00:16:22.936
People think: "In order to be productive,
I need to multitask.

00:16:22.951 --> 00:16:26.208
I need to do more things
at any given time."

00:16:26.289 --> 00:16:29.088
But that's actually opposite
to everything I just told you

00:16:29.088 --> 00:16:30.381
about how the brain works.

00:16:30.381 --> 00:16:33.313
Your brain works better
when it's unitasking,

00:16:33.313 --> 00:16:35.720
when it's only doing
one thing at a time. Okay?

00:16:35.720 --> 00:16:38.952
How many of you check your phones
when you're studying,

00:16:38.952 --> 00:16:41.025
or when you're doing something important

00:16:41.097 --> 00:16:43.654
like writing a report
or making an important plan?

00:16:43.654 --> 00:16:46.430
How many of you check your phones
when you do that?

00:16:46.464 --> 00:16:47.951
Let's be honest.

00:16:47.964 --> 00:16:49.671
Everyone checks their phones right?

00:16:49.671 --> 00:16:52.910
How many of you check your phones
more than one or two times an hour?

00:16:52.950 --> 00:16:55.773
Yes, all of your hands are still up. Okay?

00:16:56.197 --> 00:16:58.346
Psychology and neuroscience
research suggests

00:16:58.353 --> 00:17:00.994
that that's not
a very efficient way to work.

00:17:01.619 --> 00:17:02.949
So let's try this out.

00:17:02.964 --> 00:17:05.868
I think this is
an important demonstration.

00:17:05.902 --> 00:17:08.412
I'm going to show
a list of numbers on the left.

00:17:08.476 --> 00:17:13.468
If the number is blue, add seven;
if the number is pink, subtract seven.

00:17:13.482 --> 00:17:15.118
Then move on to the next number.

00:17:15.134 --> 00:17:17.339
You're going down the list
as fast as you can.

00:17:17.354 --> 00:17:20.319
Add seven if it's blue,
and just subtract seven if it's red,

00:17:20.319 --> 00:17:22.032
and move on to the next number.

00:17:22.058 --> 00:17:25.587
When you're done just clap your hands
so I know when people are finished.

00:17:25.592 --> 00:17:28.377
Okay? It's clear instructions.
Add seven or subtract seven.

00:17:28.392 --> 00:17:30.205
Here we go. One, two, three.

00:17:31.058 --> 00:17:33.515
Do it as fast as you can.

00:17:43.984 --> 00:17:45.772
Okay. I am hearing some claps.

00:17:45.777 --> 00:17:48.363
When you're done clap your hands quickly.

00:17:50.261 --> 00:17:52.177
Okay. Great.
So, you're pretty much done.

00:17:52.222 --> 00:17:54.044
Let's just do it one more time.

00:17:54.044 --> 00:17:56.064
Now the list on the on the right.

00:17:56.064 --> 00:17:58.819
Here we go.

00:18:00.987 --> 00:18:04.294
If it's blue add seven;
if it's pink subtract seven.

00:18:04.474 --> 00:18:07.034
As fast as you can.

00:18:07.736 --> 00:18:10.813
And then you can clap
at the end of the list.

00:18:19.947 --> 00:18:22.639
Okay. So what do you think?

00:18:23.780 --> 00:18:26.706
Much harder isn't it? It's much harder.

00:18:26.718 --> 00:18:28.782
But you probably also noticed

00:18:28.790 --> 00:18:31.300
that these two lists are the same.

00:18:31.317 --> 00:18:36.313
The same number of addition problems,
the same number of subtraction problems.

00:18:36.333 --> 00:18:38.294
But on the left you're unitasking,

00:18:38.302 --> 00:18:42.405
doing a bunch of addition and then
only switching once to do subtraction.

00:18:42.439 --> 00:18:44.575
On the right you're multitasking. Okay?

00:18:44.581 --> 00:18:47.526
So when you're studying or working
while checking your phone,

00:18:47.531 --> 00:18:49.168
you're doing stuff on the right,

00:18:49.174 --> 00:18:51.671
you're making your job
harder for yourself.

00:18:51.968 --> 00:18:54.965
And if you'd like to test this
in the laboratory,

00:18:54.965 --> 00:19:00.526
on the right you're going to be 30% slower
and going to be 30% less accurate,

00:19:00.545 --> 00:19:02.965
and your brain has to work harder.

00:19:02.976 --> 00:19:06.348
It's like exercising wearing
a big heavy backpack.

00:19:06.378 --> 00:19:08.441
Why would you handicap yourself

00:19:08.468 --> 00:19:12.402
if you can unitask
like we showed you here on the left?

00:19:12.420 --> 00:19:14.466
Okay? So that's my final tip.

00:19:14.488 --> 00:19:18.505
It's to try to unitask
to improve your focus and productivity.

00:19:18.505 --> 00:19:20.300
It's okay to check your phone;

00:19:20.331 --> 00:19:24.750
just do it after you've finished working
for 30 minutes or an hour as a reward.

00:19:24.750 --> 00:19:26.490
Don't check it every five minutes.

00:19:26.490 --> 00:19:28.575
Don't check your emails
every five minutes,

00:19:28.575 --> 00:19:31.351
don't check your Facebook
every five minutes.

00:19:31.351 --> 00:19:35.457
So in conclusion, my three tips
for improving focus and attention are:

00:19:35.484 --> 00:19:39.045
simplify, relax, unitask.

00:19:39.045 --> 00:19:43.232
I guarantee that the research indicates
that your productivity will go up

00:19:43.254 --> 00:19:44.995
if you follow these tips,

00:19:44.995 --> 00:19:46.679
and it may even make you smarter.

00:19:46.679 --> 00:19:48.027
Thank you very much.

00:19:48.027 --> 00:19:50.027
(Applause)