Episode 127: Attention span

Andy Psarianos

Hi. I'm Andy Psarianos.

Robin Potter

Hi. I'm Robin Potter.

Adam Gifford

Hi. I'm Adam Gifford.

Andy Psarianos

This is the School of School podcast.

Welcome to the School of School podcast.

Robin Potter

So, welcome back to another episode of School of School podcast. I'm here with Andy and Adam. Hello, both.

Andy Psarianos

Hello, hello.

Adam Gifford

Hi, Robin.

Robin Potter

And we are here, you see, I don't even have their attention to start. I can barely get your attention to say hello. So I think that's actually a great introduction to what we're going to talk about on this episode, which is attention spans. Dah, dah, dah, dah. And I'm kind of curious because I know my two children have very different lengths of attention when they're talking to me. I don't even think I can ... I can barely get either of their attention, but in particular, if I don't have them focused with maybe I'm dangling a piece of candy in front of me or something, I'm easy to ignore. But what about in the classroom? I'm really curious these days. We've got a lot of things going on. Sometimes kids are allowed to have their phones in classrooms. How on earth do teachers keep their attention in the class?

Andy Psarianos

Well, I don't think that people have ever had great attention spans. I think the mind is meant to wander. It just wanders. The stream of consciousness thing is just like ... if you ever tried things like meditation where you're supposed to keep your mind empty, it's almost impossible, right? You can't stop your mind from thinking or going in different directions. Some people can remain focused on things better than others, but I don't know. Is it a new thing? Is it something that we created or has it always been like that? I've never had a great attention span. I still don't.

Adam Gifford

But I'm actually fascinated, right? So I'm fascinated, because clearly attention is not a set thing. If something's boring you to death, you're going to look elsewhere. If something is sort of, I don't know, there's a fireworks display or something, it might hold your attention slightly longer. So it's obviously dependent on what you're doing.

I think in the classroom, Robin, one of the nice things is is that if you are teaching a class or you are involved in something, there's enough going on that actually, whilst you're paying attention to the whole class, you're actually kind of having your attention drawn in a million different things. So, you're not paying attention to one thing at all because there's all stuff going on, a bit like your skyrockets going off all over the show. So, it works well if you've not got a great attention span, because you're having to attend to all sorts of things all at once.

I used to have teachers when I was young who I think they attended to themselves and they just lectured for hours on end. And I'm not quite sure what they were attending to. It wasn't us. But I don't know. I'm fascinated by it. Yeah, go on.

Andy Psarianos

Peanuts. Peanuts, the cartoon.

Adam Gifford

Like Charlie Brown and Lucy and the team.

Andy Psarianos

You know what we're talking about. Yeah, you know. That was the thing as well.

Robin Potter

Wah, wah, wah, wah.

Andy Psarianos

That was the teacher. That was the teacher, right? Wah, wah, wah, wah.

Adam Gifford

Exactly.

Andy Psarianos

That was the classroom.

Adam Gifford

Yeah.

Robin Potter

Yeah, that's all you heard because you weren't really paying any attention at all.

Andy Psarianos

And often that's all the kids hear, right? But that's not a new thing, is it? But yeah, so I guess Robin, but you seem to be implying or thinking that your kids' attention span is shorter than people's attention span was maybe when we were children.

Robin Potter

Maybe it's just more obvious how short it is.

Andy Psarianos

Well it's obvious because you are the one that's trying to get them to pay attention to you, right?

Adam Gifford

Exactly.

Robin Potter

And they have a device. It's not just them looking out the window.

Andy Psarianos

It's easier for them to ignore you maybe. Yeah.

Robin Potter

Yeah. And it's more obvious to me that they're ignoring me rather than-

Andy Psarianos

Okay, but maybe they have

Robin Potter

Subtly.

Andy Psarianos

Maybe they have hyper extension, maybe they're better at it. Because my kids and my wife, we're watching stuff and they're on their phones while we're watching stuff and they know what's going on. And I'm like, how do you do that? I can't do that.

Robin Potter

They're multitasking.

Adam Gifford

But see, I think this chicken and the egg thing, is that it's easy for me to sit back, whenever I want to feel old this is the sort of thing that I say, it's like, well, the attention span of the youth, today's gone to the pop. It's awful. And it's the bloody computers and the phones that do it. Well, maybe the phones have just tapped into that mobile ... what are they called? Fireworks display. All it's doing is here's something that you can spend a nanosecond on, and then another one and another one and another one. And all it's doing is tapping into something we've always done. It's just that-

Andy Psarianos

It's like micro-learning.

Adam Gifford

Yeah, hey, it's-

Robin Potter

Hey, there we go.

Adam Gifford

For listeners out there refer to episode number ... hear our expertise on it. And maybe that's the case that it's just tapped into something that we've always done. We've always done it. We've wandered through the woods and looked at stuff. And again, I sound a hundred years old as if we were just constantly wandering through the woods looking at stuff. But yeah, it's always been thus, that we've never really paid attention at all.

Robin Potter

Okay. Okay. So let's say we've always had short attention spans. I didn't even hear what you said, Adam. I was looking out the window thinking about something else.

Adam Gifford

Quite right.

Andy Psarianos

What are we talking about?

Robin Potter

Okay, but no, but seriously, no, but okay, so what do teachers do to get their students to focus on them and to actually, that's going back to the question.

Adam Gifford

You do what TikTok does.

Andy Psarianos

That's a good question.

Adam Gifford

No, I was going to say, I just think you do what TikTok does is that you go, right, here's a snippet. Are you interested in it? Have a look, have a play with it for a moment. Now bring it back to this and then back to you, and then this and that. Oh, what's that? Oh, go and have a play with it. Yeah, totally.

And it goes back to the old, old, old, but that structured learning, right? The exploration structured learning. Oh, what have you got in front of you there? Some cubes. Well, what have you made? No way. Could you make a tail that's just one bigger than that? No, you couldn't, could you? I'll leave it to you. Oh, really? One less, no, what have you made? That sort of thing.

It's that same idea about dropping something in. Just drop it in, drop it in, drop it in, and you're just growing on what you're doing. I'm not sure that that's that different to what happens with any sort of programmable feature that Andy likes looking at that. These are the types of things so he likes looking at, kittens that do something or whatever your bent is, Andy, and it learns that, right? So now I'm going to drop this in and this in and this in, and it will keep him coming back for more. And I guess that's kind of what we try to tap into teaching, I would've thought.

Andy Psarianos

But there are things too that, so those are the small sort of things that you do in the moment. But there are other larger things that you can do that help as well I believe. One is routines, classroom routines. So you set an expectation as to what's going to happen next so that people are aware of what the process is going to be. And then if you can kind of, not automate it, but make it so predictable in a way that it's like, I don't know if you can think of lots of different areas in your life where this applies. Just getting up in the morning, you get up in the morning and what do you do next? Do you brush your teeth? Do you comb your hair? Do you have a shower? All these different things are routines that you apply. You apply those to your day to day, and then they help you with dealing with some of that attention span stuff.

And the other thing is kind of the internal dialogue that you get in your mind. For example, this metacognitive dialogue that you have. So you can train that into kids to say, okay, if you keep asking them the same questions all the time, eventually they'll start asking themselves those questions. So that metacognitive dialogue. So you can train. It's kind of like training, I don't want to say training a dog because it's like, well, I don't want to reduce it down to that. But it is. Dogs know routines. Every afternoon at 4:30, I take the dogs for a walk, right? Well, 4:35, the dogs are just hopping around the house if we haven't gone for a walk yet, right? They're like, what's going on? It's 4:35 now, it's walk time. So routines, metacognitive scripts that you can implant in your brain. Oh, how do you know? Are you sure? Did you check with your friend? Those things, they all help with those attention span things because we like routines and we just fall into them. So they can help. They can help.

Robin Potter

And being interactive, yeah.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah. Using manipulatives.

Robin Potter

Engaging, making them, yeah, exactly.

Andy Psarianos

Knowing that they have to talk to the person next to them or that there's an expectation that they're going to have to do this, that, and whatever, that it keeps them on task. And those things do help. They do help. I think if you leave people to themselves for too long, they will drift. But the question is how long? Because the other factor is you don't want to interrupt them all the time either. So it is like keep it moving, keep it moving. But hey, they're having this profound thing and you're like, I'm going to interrupt you now and I want you to do what I'm thinking all the time isn't helpful either.

Adam Gifford

And I guess that's the judgement call of the teacher. And that will be dependent on all sorts of things. So if you're doing something that you love, I imagine if it's a music lesson, Andy, then it's something that you're probably not going to need too much encouragement. And I'm just going to give you a couple of tips every now and then where necessary. And you're probably going to be attending to that, no problem whatsoever. Whereas I might need a bit more coaxing or something, a different approach.

Andy Psarianos

Well, here's an interesting thing. You just kind of touched on something there that I was thinking about earlier. When you look at something like, so I'm big into music, but I know Robin, you're really into fitness, and Adam, I know you probably have some stuff that you do that's also kind of more self, I don't want to say self-centred, but it's kind of like where you have to go into some kind of zone.

So I've recently, I've taken up rowing, inspired by my son. I've got myself a rowing machine, and every morning I do a good go on the rowing machine. I get in some kind of zone when I'm in there, what's my attention span there? Or if I'm playing music, my brain is in a completely different place than when I'm not doing those kinds of things. Something happens there. I don't know what it is. I don't even know how to describe it. It's almost like a hypnosis or something where you kind of lose, this channel opens up, this just channel opens up where you can do things without even considering them. I can play music, when I play music, when I start thinking about what I'm playing, it all falls apart. It just collapses. It's just this channel. What is that thing and what does that have to do with attention span?

Robin Potter

Well, yeah, that's a whole other topic, but I agree that it's almost like we have an attention span. It's something that we're being forced to focus on rather than the flow as you discuss, where it just comes naturally. And so you're just in this state rather than having to try and pay attention to what you're doing.

Andy Psarianos

Well, I think the routines open that flow. It's the same when you work. Sometimes when you're working, there's certain elements of what you're doing where you just boom, you're in it and then time just passes.

Adam Gifford

I wonder, it reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers. I don't know if you've read it.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah, great book.

Robin Potter

Yes. Yeah.

Adam Gifford

So I think perhaps he's talking about the fact that people excel, but practise, a lot of practise and it becomes, and maybe that's what we're talking about, maybe the things that we love and we do anyway, and we've done for a long time, that you reach a level that allows you to get that sort of hyper focus that everything else disappears because you're no longer consciously thinking about lots of moving parts. You're just doing. You are just doing.

And you hear, I mean most often hear it on the telly, like sports people where they just say, "I was in the zone. I couldn't hear anything else. I couldn't hear the crowd. I couldn't." It was just, you heard about McEnroe, "The ball was this big and it was unmissable." And that sort of thing.

And I just wonder if you can reach a stage with some things where you're not attending to anything to get, you can just kind of let go almost. Because all of those, the sort of functions that most of us would need to think about it to make it happen, you don't have to attend to them anymore. There's just something that you can go with. It's beyond my level of expertise. But I think it's really interesting that that way of describing something where you can kind of just let go and something else happens or the focus becomes absolute.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah. It's the muse, right? It's like when you talk about, artists talk about it all the time, whether they're painters and they say, "I don't know. I don't know. I wasn't even thinking about it. This is what came out." Or songwriters and poets. They're like, "I don't know who wrote this song. I didn't write it. I just got my pen out and it just came out. I wasn't even thinking about it. I don't know where it came from." It's interesting, right? Is that the opposite of the lack of attention span, or is it the same thing? I don't know.

Adam Gifford

But I wonder how much attention you've paid, maybe it's the payoff for attention, right? Because chances are, I don't know this to be true, by the way, but most of the time when you hear people describing that situation, they've put in a lot of time practising effectively and learning prior to getting to that level. So I guess the attentions, it's the payoff. It's the attention payoff at the end of it, perhaps. I don't know, it's interesting. I'm fascinated by it.

Andy Psarianos

I'm not a neuroscientist, I'm not a psychologist. I'm not, all the disclaimers here.

Robin Potter

Let's be clear.

Andy Psarianos

I don't know anything about any of this stuff, and I have no idea what I'm talking about. But it's kind of like there's this part of your brain that likes to think it's in control, which speaks English. You know what I mean? And it says things to you and it does things. And it's kind of like where you exist most of the time. And sometimes it's kind of like you can just wipe that away. And then the rest of your brain, which doesn't speak English, and you have absolutely no control over, can do these remarkable things. And that's where all the remarkable things seem to happen. The cleverness, the creativity, the sort of inspiration and these aha moments that pop out. It's almost kind of like, how do you strip that bit of the brain away so that all that other really smart part of you can actually go to work? And this ego that's in the way that's trying to control everything is kind of messes stuff up.

And that's the one that has the problem with the attention span in my mind, right? Because it's kind of like a four year old and it's just not even a four year old, it's like an 18 month old just learning how to walk and getting into everything and it can't stop itself. It's almost like this, it's like, I don't know, I should write, this is my own psychology theory here. Right?

Adam Gifford

It's fascinating though. We need to get someone on who can help-

Andy Psarianos

Who know all this stuffs.

Adam Gifford

Who demystifies some of this.

Robin Potter

Who might be a neuroscientist?

Adam Gifford

Yeah.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah, there are people who understand this stuff much more profoundly, but it's not even about the mechanics of how it works, I don't think. It's just more just kind of like the, you know?

Adam Gifford

And I'd like to think there's a part that people don't know actually, I've decided, because you think of all the great creatives. I'd like to think there's a part of that that just remains mystical. I think that, you know?

Andy Psarianos

So you think you get better with time, for example, right? But you look at, I remember hearing, who was it, Bob Dylan was talking about this and he said, "Yeah, those songs that I wrote," the songs that we all know that Bob Dylan's like, "I don't even know who that person was. I don't remember writing. I don't even know how I wrote the songs, but I can tell you I can't write them anymore. I don't know how it happened. I wasn't present." That's kind of how he talks about it. It's interesting.

Adam Gifford

It's fascinating. I love it. It's fascinating. We need to find out more. I'm not sure what the find out more part is.

Robin Potter

We do.

Adam Gifford

But curious anyway.

Andy Psarianos

Let's see if we can get Bob Dylan on the podcast.

Adam Gifford

I think that'd be a-

Robin Potter

Yeah. Okay.

Adam Gifford

Yeah, work on that.

Robin Potter

Let me just send him a message.

Andy Psarianos

I'm sure he'll say yes.

Adam Gifford

Get a sample tape ready to him-

Robin Potter

Of course he will.

Adam Gifford

Just in case he signs you up and takes it from there. Did we answer your question? Did we get back to?

Robin Potter

Yeah, I don't think so.

Adam Gifford

And the kids, Robin? It's just the kids. It's just not attention. It's just your own children. For all of us.

Robin Potter

It's just my own children.

Adam Gifford

Maybe not for Andrew, but I can empathise.

Robin Potter

Okay. That makes me feel better.

Andy Psarianos

Here's an interesting question. What's more important? Is it attention span or a stream of consciousness?

Adam Gifford

Truth. That's another episode.

Robin Potter

I don't know.

Adam Gifford

Can we come back to that one? Can I just give it a bit of thought?

Robin Potter

Yeah, think about it. Don't lose attention on it though. Just got to stay focused.

Andy Psarianos

Thank you for joining us on the School of School podcast.