
Intelligent Attention
There’s a lot of suggestions on the face of internet ranging from hacking your brain to increasing your attention that aim to improve personal performance. It seems that a lot has already been said. I might not be able to add more but I still want to share seeds of a thought.
Design Features of Creation
One striking feature of things is the level of efficiency and consistency built into things. From the planetary level to microscopic level, everything seems to have this maximum optimization towards a common universal goal. Hence the universe.
Here though I will focus on our hearts. Our heart is very persistent in what it does. And it is designed to do it’s job extremely well. It is one of the earliest organs that starts ticking and keeps pumping blood to the entire body till the end of one’s lifespan. It is intensely durable and consistent. A powerhouse of efficiency with an extreme scheduler built-in.
How Does Your Heart Succeed?
For a 60 beat per minute heart rate, each beat is done in 1 second. The contraction lasts between 240 ms to 320 ms and relaxation lasts between 760 ms to 680 ms. The very first observable behavior of the heart is the contraction-relaxation cycle. This feature is essential to lifelong success.
Sometimes the heart rate increases, from 60 to, say, 180. And the interval of the entire contraction-relaxation cycle gets shorter, the ratio of contraction to relaxation varies up and down, but the cycle never breaks. There’s always a relaxing phase following the contraction.
The relaxing state of the heart is not coincidental. It is not a mere break. The interesting thing about relaxation is that it’s designed to maximize the contraction. While the heart muscles are relaxed, the blood is let inside the ventricles. When the heart is ready to pump again, at the contraction level, it’s already filled with blood, ready to go. This is a very intelligent and efficient cycle.
The heart is used not only to fuel the body, but to fuel the building of the heart itself as well. This is yet another key feature and a smart design.
Resembling Your Heart
Do you work non-stop? Are you focusing on your work until you get tired? What’s the pattern that you follow?
I humbly think that the pattern is to resemble our heart. This is if you are seeking extreme durability and performance. Heart, by design, is the central piece of intelligently scheduled persistent output cycle. Following the same pattern might result in the same success for our lives. At least that’s the idea I want to suggest.
What if we worked as intelligently as our heart does? What if we directed our attention using this pattern? What could be the output? I think results of such a work schedule could be extremely better.
First component of the cycle is contraction where the blood is pumped out of the heart. This is hard work. In our life, this is where you learn a talent, gain a skill, do artisan work, solve a problem or simply add another layer to your effort. This is where you push yourself further towards your goal.
Second component of the cycle is carefully designed relaxation. A relaxing state entirely dedicated to maximize the efficiency of next contraction. In our life, a relaxing phase fills you with resources and energy for the next step. It is an intelligent stop for a smart move. It is not mere waste of time, in the contrary it is the timely preparation of your next act.
The Golden Ratio of Intensity Levels
According to a study, healthy heart follows the golden ratio of heart pressure. That is the pressure that is observed by the contraction is 1.6 times more than the pressure observed by the relaxation. That means, relaxation still has a strength. It just isn’t as powerful as the contraction.
Do we have to follow a golden ratio when scheduling our work-break cycle? I don’t think so. Every person has a different attention span. A regular person’s attention lasts about 19 minutes. But your attention may last longer than average.
There’s a difference between intensity and duration of attention. Duration is the schedule of your work-break cycle. For a 30 minute work, you might only need 10 minutes of break. But another person might only be able to work for 19 minutes, and take an 11 minute break. That’s the ratio between duration of work and break.
Intensity, on the other hand, should be closely coupled. Just like how our heart’s intense contraction is coupled with a golden ratio to the relaxation, so should be the intensity of our focus at work time to the intensity of our relaxation. That means, the two should not be far off. If you are intensely focused during work, you should not be intensely away from focus during the break. Otherwise, you might not be as efficient and durable.
This is especially important on the face of internet era. Internet, the attention shredder, will easily grab your attention and cut it into small pieces of feeds, notifications and emails. This kind of a break will lead to a meager start to your work phase.
Break is a Weakened Version of Work
The break stage has to be coupled with work. In fact, the break stage has to be a weaker version of the work. Allowing you to keep filling the tank but at the same time gaining energy for the next stage of work.
For example, if you are intensely focused on the details of a content in your work stage, your break might be designed to only rehearse outline of the content. The break should always be a weak version of your work, but never far off.
In that sense, studying on an intense subject and breaking the work with mindless surf on the internet or video gaming would not be desirable. Because surfing the net or gaming is not a weak version of your work. It is far from it.
Final Thoughts
Our hearts are amazing. So can be our lives. All we need to consider might be an intelligent cycle. A genius pattern. A heartfelt way of work.
I will be experimenting on the golden ratio of intensity between work-break stages of attention as well as different schedules of work-break cycle. I hope to gain some insight and share my insights with you as well.
Disclaimer and Invitation to Comment
The idea in this article is entirely experimental. I am not claiming any truth to it. I am simply relying on the powerful facts of our creation. If you like this idea, please help me develop a better version of it. Comment on it. Talk to me about it. Express your idea. Use it and tell me the results.
