Chasing the Shiny Object

What separates success from failure? Defining either is almost always subject to interpretation. Success is often a very different concept to each one of us, and the concept of failure clearly has its own personal implications. I believe, however, that without the experience of some type of failure, we do not fully understand or perceive success. For most, our ability to achieve the success we desire comes from our focus, our ability to visualize and understand the options presented, and our basic desire to achieve. While our ability to stay focused is key, this sometimes becomes increasingly difficult over long periods of time. Growing up, each of us sat in classrooms, listening to instructors while trying to comprehend, learn, and appreciate what they were trying to teach us. For me, too often I felt as if my teachers were personifications of the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon. As I sat in that desk as a child, my mind could not help wandering; whether I was just disinterested or perhaps distracted, fortunately this seemed to change when I experienced an interest in the field of dentistry. Lately, difficulty focusing has brought back those childhood memories, and based upon conversations with several colleagues, this is not uncommon in today's distracting technological world.

In the book Stolen Focus, Johann Hari discusses the distractions that are all around us and the difficulties they present: "If we want to do what matters in any domain, any context in life, we have to be able to give attention to the right things. If we can't do that, it's really hard to do anything." A study by Michael Posner, PhD, at the University of Oregon found that regaining focus after a distraction such as an office phone, social media, or text message can take up to 23 minutes. That seems troubling and rather extreme, but even a fraction of that would be a concerning loss of listening and learning time. For example, in our typical lecture formats where most of us hope to educate ourselves, this distraction time may impede and disrupt the process whereby we attempt to consciously listen to the material and move to understanding the information that we are being provided.

Hari emphasizes that these distractions and the resulting loss of focus are becoming an increasingly systematic problem. Social media, tech companies, and the platforms that they provide present a constant distraction that, in my opinion, require a whole system overhaul. In response, I am working on limiting the distractions in my work. When I am building ceramics, I avoid my cell phone, unnecessary calls, and interruptions, and I also work to give the same space to my team so that we may all maintain a healthy focus while achieving a task. We are not perfect at it by any means, and it may be par for the course in a busy work environment, but in a learning environment, we need to make necessary adjustments. Perhaps with the constant newly created distractions, our need to stay focused is more difficult, but it is not impossible. I do believe that if we turn off and away from these distractions and shiny objects that we may utilize this gained time to our optimum benefit and that our path to success will change dramatically.

Peter Pizzi, MDT, CDT
Editor-in-Chief
ppizzi@aegiscomm.com