How Eddie Hall muscles his way into our attention system

I don’t know about you but something strange happens to me on a pretty regular basis. One minute I’m going about my normal day-to-day life.

Then suddenly I find I’ve lost 15 minutes to watching former world’s strongest man Eddie Hall spend a day with the woman with the largest mouth in the world. They’re eating massive things together.

Why does this happen? What’s wrong with my attention system that it gets hijacked so regularly?

We really need to talk about attention. Because it’s not just me. There have never been so many demands on our concentration. People used to say that there was more information in the average New York Times Sunday Edition than someone in the middle-ages would learn in a lifetime.

And today, if anything, it’s likely worse. We’re bombarded by information constantly. With stimuli.

I started studying neuroscience because one of my kids was diagnosed with ADHD. Before his diagnosis I used to get really frustrated with him. He couldn’t remember what he did the previous day. Video games sent him into another world. It was worrying. But it wasn’t his fault.

ADHD isn’t a binary thing. We’re all on a spectrum of attention. And our attention system is designed to be hijacked.

Ever done mindfulness class and tried to focus your attention on the breath, then bring it back when attention starts to drift? It’s hard, right? You know how long someone who has been practicing mindful meditation for 30 years can hold their attention without drifting? About seven seconds.

There are diary entries from monks 400 years ago, monks who did little else but meditate. Bemoaning their attention wandering.

Things hijack our attention. They always have. And the way it happens is pretty predictable.

Because our attention system evolved in a highly selective environment where failing to pay attention at the right time, or being immersively focused at another, were very important. But not as important as being distracted.

Our ancestors who didn’t get distracted got eaten

In rural India tigers won’t attack people with eyes on the back of their heads. Even large predators don’t want much of a fight. They pick off the inattentive.

We’re all here because we evolved to be at least a little bit distractable. But that doesn’t make life easy. Because the world (well, other people) have developed tricks to hijack our attention. Here’s Eddie Hall illustrating this point by running over a vintage safe in a tank.

Amisha Jha, a research neuroscientist who wrote the book Peak Mind, talks about our attention system as comprising three subsystems.

The flashlight

Your attention is focused on illuminating whatever you point it at. The flashlight is in action when you’re looking for your keys in the usual places, keeping an eye out for the colour of the keyring, maybe the glint of metal.

The floodlight

The floodlight is more generalised. You’re focused but not in an active, directed way. Now you have your keys you’re driving to the office. You’re going to notice and act on red lights, traffic, other drivers. Your flashlight is not engaged, but it can be brought into play if you need it. Like if a pedestrian steps out into the road. Or whatever.

The juggler

The juggler is like an overseer between the two other systems. It has a big picture overview of what actually needs to get done. The juggler ensures that when you park your car you don’t grab your phone and start watching Eddie Hall reacting to videos of circus strongmen crushing melons. The juggler keeps you on track.

So where does the system get hijacked? Curiously, It’s not your phone that’s the big problem. It’s actually your own brain. In almost all cases, the outside stimuli poke us to relate them to ourselves in some way. Seen an advert for McDonalds? You might think about what you’re having for dinner.

Or you might see some images of beautiful models or film stars and start thinking about your own body relative to theirs.

Being under stress, feeling threatened and having low mood all amplify the degradation of our attention. Also mental time travel – when we ruminate on the past or catastrophise about things yet to happen.

Our attention system is constantly comparing and relating us to the world around us. It’s not always a negative comparison, but it can distract us from what we want, rationally, to be doing.