If you feel scattered and find it difficult to focus your attention on your writing, you’re not alone, not weird, not wrong.
You’re probably suffering from mental clutter. Your brain is filled with too many things to think about, remember, ponder, take action on. You’re struggling to make sense of a cacophony of demands on your attention from email, social media, news media, all the stuff in the world around you, people who matter and complete strangers.
Writers juggle the diverse facets of writing with a multitude of other responsibilities and challenges. Many of us have another job as office manager/CEO of our writing business, teaching, editing, or working somewhere else to supplement income. We all have families, friends, communities that require our time and attention. We all live in a complex, and often scary, world.
Deciding what and where to focus your attention involves three brain networks:
- Alertness Network: constantly monitors what’s coming in through our senses and is always on the lookout for the unusual
- Orienting Network: causes us to look at, listen to and sniff the unusual to get more information (this is the “Oh, look! A bright and shiny object!” moment)
- Executive Network: decides whether to give the unusual stimulus sustained attention or ignore it in favor of what we were previously focused on.
The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain involved in the Executive Network’s decisions about how to response to a stimulus. The prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that anticipates the future, evaluates possible outcomes, plans, discerns what’s important and what isn’t, and is capable of delaying immediate satisfaction for the sake of a larger, long-term gain.
If your prefrontal cortex is not available, you literally cannot decide what to focus on.
When a specific, tangible threat triggers your limbic system to take over, your attention is appropriately focused on avoiding the tangible threat. (more about limbic system takeovers in chapter 2 of Around the Writer’s Block and here)
But when non-specific stress triggers your limbic system, effectively disconnecting the cortex’s Executive Network, you can’t decide what deserves your attention.
The fear of missing something important and the stress of having too much to do, too much information to attend to, and no way to choose what you can safely ignore triggers the limbic system and makes it impossible for the Executive Network to decide what to do, what information to attend to, and what to ignore.
The only way to break this vicious cycle is to consciously, intentionally choose to relax.
Choose to focus on nothing but your breathing and let your body go limp. Relaxing will bring your prefrontal cortex back online (more about that in chapter 2 of Around the Writer’s Block and here).
And as soon as you’ve got your prefrontal cortex online, you can choose what to let go of, what you will not do, what information you will not process, what you will ignore.
When you feel so frenzied, you can’t figure out which of the hundred things clamoring for your attention you should do next, do nothing.
Relax. The world isn’t going to stop turning if you take 5 to 10 minutes to reboot your prefrontal cortex and remember what’s truly important.
Bane of Your Resistance 
Who is the creator of the image?
Thank you.
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You can find info about this graphic at 23rf.com
Go here: https://www.123rf.com/stock-photo/15112611.html?sti=n1scn2jqrstw2iyt31|
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You can info about this graphic at: https://www.123rf.com/stock-photo/15112611.html?sti=n1scn2jqrstw2iyt31|
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I am writing a diary of the thoughts of myself, someone who suffers with emotional instability and a personality disorder. I do not plan to publish it online before 2023. Until it’s built up substance. With that in mind, I would like to ask permission to use your image of the girl who appears as ‘normal’ (not my normal) from the neck down but has a chaotic and creative brain that never stops working on multiple things at once, whether they’re healthy to dwell on or not. My interpretation. Please may I use this as a cover image, with watermark of the artist of course.
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Hi Rainbow Jones,
Best of luck with your book.
You can purchase permission to use the image from 123rf.com
Go here: https://www.123rf.com/stock-photo/15112611.html?sti=n1scn2jqrstw2iyt31|
Permission to use an image in a book may be different; be sure to check the usage details.
Keep showing up for your book and your self!
Rosanne
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Training my brain to overcome my chronic illness (brain fog, pain, etc.) at few minutes at a time. Hard work, but rewarding!
P.S. I don’t know how many years ago I read Around the Writer’s Block, but now I have a poodle competing in Master’s level AKC agility! Still working on the book though…
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Hi Hell’s Bells and Mast Cells, yes, training our brains is so rewarding. What a gift it is that we can do that for ourselves even in the face of chronic illness. Kudos to you for putting in the effort! And congrats on reaching the Master’s level in AKC agility. Keep showing up — for your book, your poodle-partner and yourself!
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