This is exciting and interesting stuff. A good one-sentence summary from the paper:
In sum, many experiences, particularly the more or less unpleasant sensations discussed here (e.g., effort, boredom, fatigue), can be profitably thought of as resulting from (1) monitoring mechanisms that tally opportunity costs, which (2) cause an aversive state that corresponds in magnitude to the cost computed, which (3) enters into decision-making, acting as a kind of “vote,” influencing the decision ultimately taken.
I’m trying to get my head around ways I could use this to sustain better and longer levels of focus, reduce boredom, etc. Two questions come to mind, that as far as I can tell have not been investigated in detail yet, and to which I don’t have answers:
What, exactly, are the sorts of things my brain decides are more important than what I’m currently doing? Is it things like “I’m not signaling the right things to the people around me”, “need food”, etc.?
What are good ways to “reset” my internal monitoring mechanisms and thus return to a non-aversive state? I presume the answer is some kind of reward or positive feedback?
Basically, is it possible to trick this internal cost-benefit analysis into being focused for long periods of time?
Developing mindfulness skills (via mindfulness meditation, for example) probably wouldn’t be a waste of time, if you want to improve your focus and decrease impulsive task-switching (and make doing productive things less unpleasant). I suspect that, in Kurzban’s model, that feeling of “boredom” stems from a monitoring mechanism giving a negative evaluation of whatever it is you’re doing.
When you practice mindfulness, you’re basically practicing focusing on just one thing (breathing) and learning to shrug off and silence whatever comes to conscious attention that isn’t relevant to that one thing. Applying Kurzban’s model to mindfulness, you could say that you are improving your ability to, at will, mute those monitoring mechanisms and the aversive states that correspond to their outputs.
With meditation, when you’re first starting out, you just attempt to notice when you are distracted and then return your thoughts to breathing. When you feel emotions (like boredom, which is a common one), you are supposed to note how intense it is and how long it lasts, then return to focusing on breathing. As you do this over and over, you start to get really, really fast at doing that attention re-direction/distraction suppression to the point where the distracting thoughts and emotions don’t rise to a high enough level of intensity to cause you to shift your attention from your breathing (the distraction suppression becomes a kind of intuitive process that happens almost automatically).
In my personal experience, I’ve felt like it’s much easier to stay focused on things (and not feel horribly bored when there’s less productive but instantly gratifying alternatives) when I’ve kept up a steady meditation habit and made an effort to be mindful throughout the day. I’ve been trying to be aware of my feelings and how they fit with this model as I go about my day (which involves forcing myself to do a lot of things that aren’t instantly gratifying but are long-term rewarding), and I’ve definitely felt like the mindfulness habits I’ve picked up work to negate or mute that feeling of boredom (when I actually remember to use them). When I’m trying to get started on some productive task, I really feel the aversive state at first, but I can use mindfulness to help eliminate it or it fades as I start to focus more and more on what I’m doing. When I have a problem, though (like I make a mistake when playing piano or am struggling to figure out some programming bug), I start to feel those aversive states (made even stronger by frustration) if I don’t continue to apply mindfulness.
At the very least, meditation seems like it has helped improve my awareness of what my brain is doing at a given moment. Having Kurzban’s model in mind when applying that introspection seems like it could be very useful for debugging undesirable behavior.
This is exciting and interesting stuff. A good one-sentence summary from the paper:
I’m trying to get my head around ways I could use this to sustain better and longer levels of focus, reduce boredom, etc. Two questions come to mind, that as far as I can tell have not been investigated in detail yet, and to which I don’t have answers:
What, exactly, are the sorts of things my brain decides are more important than what I’m currently doing? Is it things like “I’m not signaling the right things to the people around me”, “need food”, etc.?
What are good ways to “reset” my internal monitoring mechanisms and thus return to a non-aversive state? I presume the answer is some kind of reward or positive feedback?
Basically, is it possible to trick this internal cost-benefit analysis into being focused for long periods of time?
Developing mindfulness skills (via mindfulness meditation, for example) probably wouldn’t be a waste of time, if you want to improve your focus and decrease impulsive task-switching (and make doing productive things less unpleasant). I suspect that, in Kurzban’s model, that feeling of “boredom” stems from a monitoring mechanism giving a negative evaluation of whatever it is you’re doing.
When you practice mindfulness, you’re basically practicing focusing on just one thing (breathing) and learning to shrug off and silence whatever comes to conscious attention that isn’t relevant to that one thing. Applying Kurzban’s model to mindfulness, you could say that you are improving your ability to, at will, mute those monitoring mechanisms and the aversive states that correspond to their outputs.
With meditation, when you’re first starting out, you just attempt to notice when you are distracted and then return your thoughts to breathing. When you feel emotions (like boredom, which is a common one), you are supposed to note how intense it is and how long it lasts, then return to focusing on breathing. As you do this over and over, you start to get really, really fast at doing that attention re-direction/distraction suppression to the point where the distracting thoughts and emotions don’t rise to a high enough level of intensity to cause you to shift your attention from your breathing (the distraction suppression becomes a kind of intuitive process that happens almost automatically).
In my personal experience, I’ve felt like it’s much easier to stay focused on things (and not feel horribly bored when there’s less productive but instantly gratifying alternatives) when I’ve kept up a steady meditation habit and made an effort to be mindful throughout the day. I’ve been trying to be aware of my feelings and how they fit with this model as I go about my day (which involves forcing myself to do a lot of things that aren’t instantly gratifying but are long-term rewarding), and I’ve definitely felt like the mindfulness habits I’ve picked up work to negate or mute that feeling of boredom (when I actually remember to use them). When I’m trying to get started on some productive task, I really feel the aversive state at first, but I can use mindfulness to help eliminate it or it fades as I start to focus more and more on what I’m doing. When I have a problem, though (like I make a mistake when playing piano or am struggling to figure out some programming bug), I start to feel those aversive states (made even stronger by frustration) if I don’t continue to apply mindfulness.
At the very least, meditation seems like it has helped improve my awareness of what my brain is doing at a given moment. Having Kurzban’s model in mind when applying that introspection seems like it could be very useful for debugging undesirable behavior.