The theory of “active foreground and passive background” — becoming more productive in life !!

I write this article to talk about how our mind smartly perceives day to day activities and how it can be shaped best to become more productive at life. The idea is not directly scientific, but based on experience and carefully tested exercises that resulted in a conclusion that definitely works and can change one’s perception of looking at life. It’s a thought that I want to share, an idea not researched anywhere, but a proposed theory that fits into scenarios everywhere.

It’s about how we get bored, and why we get bored? Why do relationships after 3 or more years of being together, starts becoming more about how better couples are at staying together by involving in diverse hobby and activities together, rather than always having conversations to prove and demonstrate their love for each other? Why one is out of words and topics to discuss with a friend, after being 2 hours into a conversation? Why do you feel lonely and emotionally weak, and resign to curse about every little thing going wrong in your life, when depressed and left alone, even if you live at a paradise worthy place, which regardless of its beauty cant keep you happy or contented at the moment of despair! But strangely so then, why is it exactly the opposite feeling of boredom when you are doing something and are way busy to feel alone, to be alone, or to even have a sense of time. Why two highly mature people fight on petty things after having been together for so many years in a loving relationship?

I believe many share similar concepts, if not the complete answers in what I call — “the theory of active foreground and passive background”. You see, we are never doing one thing at a time. Mostly never. If you exclude the time you are preparing for your proposal or thesis submission while pursuing Ph.D., or maybe when you are getting extra work piled on by your boss at the last moment in a tech company, besides that — almost never. So what does this theory entail? Let me explain through an example.

Remember how, while driving alone, we are usually listening to something on the speaker, an audiobook, radio, self-made favorite songs playlist, podcast, Spotify or YouTube music perhaps (Clear exceptions to this rule would be: a person who is a new driver or an individual who served in the military and can very well just embrace silence). Also when you are cooking alone, maybe because you are a bachelor alone at your home or because your roommate or partner is out of town- I can bet, you are most definitely watching that highly rated Netflix series everyone is raving about, or some highly trending YouTube videos, or video-chatting with a friend, or if you are like me — listening to a podcast or an audio-book. And how about the time when you and your love are trekking mountains together on the nth number of date, and rather than talking to each other while climbing the mountains- you are listening to something on your earphones, for being engaged and to enjoy the serenity of nature !! The common observation about everything mentioned above is that we usually tend to mix up one main point of focus activity called as an active foreground with another type of silent activity we are simultaneously performing called as a passive background. And so you always need the background(a robotic task — easily repetitive and barely attention-seeking activity) to set up a scene for the action you are doing in the foreground (a cognitive task- aka the main activity, that requires your full attention). That’s why you and your love-bud love cozying up with each other on a Saturday night under a single comforter on the couch while watching Netflix. Formally known as “Netflix and chill”! A perfect man-made example of lovemaking in the background, that doesn’t involve any active cognitive efforts but helps with engaging in heightened human emotions, while Netflix serves as the perfect foreground that sets the right mood and a perfect activity to be engaged in, rather than sitting alone and staring into each other’s eyes and having nothing to say (mostly because you guys are comfortable now and know each other since years already and have talked about every topic possible). Take another example — when you are alone in a car — driving serves as the foreground comprising of an actual continuous cognitive thinking and brain involvement while simultaneously you are listening to an audio-book or songs, that set up the mood of peace or quiet after returning from work to home and helps involve human subconscious into relax mode, thus serving as the perfect background. Also, a similar situation is a time when you and your love or friends went trekking to feel all pumped and engage in healthy activity, as a way to enjoy quality time with the people you are with. The people here serve as a background for you and trekking your foreground. Without trekking, you guys will be bored standing at one place, and staring into that perfect sunset on that perfect city skyline, but again running out of topics to talk about.

I know all of this sounds maybe too naive an observation or too implicit a conclusion, but usually, we aren’t self-aware of our actions and why we feel engaged or annoyed in the first place! And so my theory provides answers to those questions. If you don’t believe me, try it out!! Don’t mention your other half, that its an experiment you are performing to literally determine if people get bored quickly on doing nothing, and go ahead and select that “perfect quiet place” for the weekend and try sitting there overlooking the city skyline hand in hand. And keep a stopwatch, of when your other half exclaims “I am hungry, let’s eat something”. Or suggests “let’s go somewhere else”. Or says “let us cook something at home tonight”. You will be amazed by how by a high percentage margin, my hypothesis will hold true of how quickly people get bored if either the foreground or background is missing from the picture.

Also, another perfect real-world example is to look at people at Starbucks or the library. Why are these people studying some real shit, for exams or performing some high brain and attention involving tasks, while Starbucks is playing songs loud enough to become a distraction? Its because even with that level of distraction, your brain is ready to concentrate on the actual work it’s supposed to perform. People watching and a random queue of songs that you aren’t even listening to serves as the perfect background to the foreground you are primarily there for- to complete some repetitive work or assignments or some daily tasks that you might not want to do alone at home. Its to get a change from your usual home life for a bit. Why so? Because unknowingly the mood setup from many strangers around you, minding their own business, doing their own work, helps you focus and not be bored or digress into thinking negative. Distraction serves here as a weapon against negative thinking and actually facilitates concentrating. You won’t believe how strong this integrated system of the continuous involvement of one’s brain in the background and foreground helps one to do tasks in general.

Ya OK so? What’s next. How is knowing this theory important in real life? Let us take love life. Maybe doing a lot of stuff alone because you don’t have much to talk about with your partner due to lack of conversations to discuss can lead both of you to feel alone most of the time even after being together, which ultimately leads to breakup or divorce. People say you should keep yourself engaged and so you start watching TV after a strenuous day of work or post a heavy relationship stress your mind is processing through. Why not do some yoga and stretches while listening to light music, with the vaporizer emitting light steam of eucalyptus and lavender essential oil in the background, or after a messy brutal breakup with your long term relation partner, why not just hit the gym and watch a new TV show, where you are doing something healthy and productive, at the same time watching a video that’s keeping your mind busy and distracted and not letting you make an active decision at that point. This utilization of “active foreground and passive background” theory serves as a much better alternative than to, sticking to one’s bed forever, feeling desolated, and following that path to overcome a horrible terrible breakup. Here you are making “gym” an active foreground where your body is continually involved and then you are watching your favorite TV series on your cellphone simultaneously while jogging on a treadmill. I bet it’s better than the “TV-couch-lying like a dead corpse on your bed” option to getting over a breakup and the best utilization of my theory.

Why does this theory work? Your body is a machine, it needs input. Whatever kind of input you put into it, your brain will provide your body with signals to successfully perform the same. And sadly, humans put emotional input for the brain to process at many times, and no actual output gets generated out of it — rather than the endless period of procrastination, boredom, depression, laziness, and hopelessness. Believe it or not- I being a non-clinical depression survivor myself, have used this one of the best tricks- that I have generated to engage my mind when all my body and soul want to do is go in denial and frustration when faced by the life barrier called stress. This is the theory that tricks your mind into pairing up the uninteresting or not so output yielding task with enjoyable and productive tasks. This theory won’t work when “deep concentration” is needed to perform a task- but rather this theory is aimed to reduce those highly unproductive parts of our daily lives- that are filled with anxiety and are mere waste. Those slots of time, when we start thinking emotionally and forget that — “ALL WE ARE IS JUST A MACHINE — THAT NEEDS LOGICAL INPUT TO CREATE PROFITABLE OUTPUT”. And for those times, my advice is to stop giving your heart so much value, it doesn’t do jack shit but pumps blood to keep you alive. Take your life as an experiment and do the right thing, to keep yourself busy, to keep yourself socially available and involved, and continually grow and learn by playing “BRAIN TRICKS” to lure yourself back into forward-moving approach. Laziness is the worst input you can provide to any part of your biological system. Try this theory of “active foreground- passive background” anywhere and tell me if it doesn’t work! It most certainly will.

Thank you so much guys for reading my opinions. I hope it helps someone !!