Just the other day, I was complaining to my friend that my ability to read, write and focus is “cooked”. Mysteriously, I noticed that I just cannot write. I will get lost halfway through writing, and forget what the next word should be. For example, right now.
I still remember when I was little, maybe around grade 1 or 2 in elementary school. Ever since I was a kid, I have liked ALL kinds of things and like doing all kinds of stuff. I like Legos, ALL sports (well except for basketball), coding, going out......It feels like I need to move and do something 24/7, like I am running on a steam engine.
During that time, I can very vividly remember one thing: I was doing homework, and all I could see and all I could feel was me, solving the questions. It is like everything, except for me and the paper in front of me, has been put on pause, like in a cassette film. I was so hyperfocused on the homework, time passed in a blink of an eye. And when I finished, the hour hand on the clock had already passed a couple of numbers. It doesn't feel like hours. It feels like magic.
The feeling was great. It is like I am pulled from the simplified world back into the real, running, messy, complicated world. Someone has pressed down the play button, and with that thick “clicking” sound, the tape started rolling: the tree, the bird, and my parents’ non-stop “time to eat” yelling. It feels like you have finished a one-kilometer sprint, and although tired, are enjoying that comfort when you get back home, sit on that couch and watch Tom and Jerry.
My life continues on, and I have always longed for that feeling, for that state of me focusing on the things that I am doing, for not worrying about anything else, as if only me and my work existed in the whole universe. Nothing else mattered in my mind when I am in that zone. I guess it is the true “locked in” state.
But it runs like sand through the clock’s hands.
The older I get, the more things I start to worry about, the less I am able to get into that hyperfocus state. Grade 4, I got my own phone, and I got a LOT more complicated homework than grade 2. Of course, there are so many interesting things on the internet. Occasionally, I started to slack off when I was doing my homework, reading low-quality web novels. “Oh no, technology ruined me again! BAN THE PHONES!!” But that is not my point. I get distracted more and more often, and resort to reading novels so I can temporarily avoid my responsibility and gain some temporary pleasure, that is what it is. I start to become lazy.
There are several factors that cause this, including:
- harder coursework
- as I get older, I get more autonomy, which means I have more freedom dictating what I want to do
- advancement of technologia! which provides an easy way for me to slack off
But if you take a closer look and examine the logic lying in between, you can create one sentence that states their relations:
When there is more boring work (difficulties), I give in more to my phone (distractions) because I can (freedom)
At first, I thought it came down to one problem: discipline. But that does not explain why I can sit down and code for hours straight. It comes down to interest. Or rather, the tolerance of boredom.
Years and years later, I am able to fully concentrate less and less. From almost every day, to once a week, to once a year, to almost never. Around grade 9 in secondary school, which is a very important year in the Chinese education system (entrance exam to enter high school), my workload stacked up. UNSOLVABLE geometry questions, CRAZILY NUMBERED chemistry practice tests, and REPETITIVE English readings, I had to sleep around 2 am every day. Well, I guess the “have to” isn't true. Playing music that I like makes my homework feel less horrible, as I can distract myself from mentally suffering doing the stuff I don't want to do. So, I formed a habit. I listen to music while working, or doing anything, and even a little bit of silence makes my brain bored.
Music makes me feel better, but is it actually better for me? From my observation from years later, no. It has become a coping mechanism, a bad one that destroys my ability to focus. Ever since grade 9, I never fully experienced that pleasure when I get something done, concentrated to a point of feeling like nothing else in the world existed.
The music was only a tip of an iceberg that sank the Titanic of my powerful ability to hyperfocus.
I moved to Canada right after the big exam. Everything became so easy. I don't have to use my brain anymore, HAHA!!! at least for the whole duration of Canadian high school. I passed and got high grades in everything so easily. I guess maybe it is the Asian genes. And I didn't worry about the problem of my ability to focus at all, at least not before CEGEP came. The high school years gave my brain the first taste of the fruit of intelligence without any work, and started to convince me that I can rely solely on my intelligence instead of discipline and still get good grades.
First semester, somehow the college decided to butcher us freshmen with Calculus 1 and Discrete Math at the same time. It was a hard time. The pressure of getting a good R-score, new environment, and the 8 am classes all kept trying to press my head below the water. Then my biggest savior and my biggest opp showed up: ChatGPT. I clutched every single test by studying with ChatGPT until 3 am the night before the test, and surprisingly, it worked. It reinforced the idea that started in high school: that I don't need to listen in class. Listening is useless. Classes are useless. It keeps reinforcing the idea in my brain that, classes are wasting my time. So what do I do? I multitask. I do my side hobby projects in class and code my startup. In my brain, only by doing actual meaningful things alongside the class, makes me not feel like I wasted a lot of time. But deep down, I know that it is because I want to do what interests me. I give in to my desire. But it isn’t that I lack the ability to focus, because I can focus on coding for my startup for hours. It’s that I lack the patience to endure the boring things that don’t stimulate me. But it is hard to change, to change the belief that classes are actually useful, that I am not wasting my time listening. I still haven’t figured out how. So even now, I still struggle to actually be willing to LISTEN to the teacher in class.
The multitasking has also become a habit. And it has been another factor that destroys my ability to focus.
I crave that hyperfocus to come back. So me writing this article without music, forcing myself to sit in the silence and boredom until the next word come out, should be a good start.
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