City life: wonderful or distracting?
Say you’re home for the summer and decide to take a walk downtown. What are you doing as your walk? Where is your attention? Is it on the people who are waiting to cross the street or the ones who just stopped in front of a store window? Perhaps it’s on the little one begging his parents for ice cream a few yards ahead of you or the shiny red convertible that is just passing by. Is your attention focused on what stores you are passing or are you watching where you are going?
What about when you’re studying for an exam in the library? Is your attention actually on your notes or is it really on your phone as you wait for a text? Have you really focused all of your attention on that o-chem problem or is part of you laughing at the antics of the group at the next table? Maybe part of your attention focused on the loud group just walking through the doors while another part is on your facebook page.
In everyday life there are so many things going on around you. There are so many things that you are aware of that you don’t even realize are taking your attention like what street you’re on or what color the storefront behind you is. Did you know that studies have actually shown that people in urbanized environments are less able to focus on a single task? Or that they are more likely to be processing everything that is going on around them instead of focusing on a single object?
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