The Information Diet

Chapter 8. Attention Fitness

My friend Rajneesh and I plodded down the pathway next to the C&O Canal on our 18th mile of a 20 mile run. For the first two hours, we talked about work or technology, politics or how our weeks had been, but after the first 10 miles our minds began to care less about the weekly minutia of our lives and more about our ability to survive. We’d been at it for about four hours, and about two hours before, we’d lost our ability to carry on cogent conversation.

I called out, “15613,” and he called out, “15626,” and then I replied, “15639.” For the past two hours, we’d simply been adding thirteens together. We’d done this little ritual over 1200 times—about 10 times a minute—for one reason: to keep our minds focused on something else other than agony.

Raj and I had stumbled upon what scientists call a strategic allocation of attention. It’s something that psychologist Walter Mischel discovered in 1972, when he conducted a study on deferred gratification called the “marshmallow test.”^[79]

Mischel brought children aged four to six years into a room free from distractions, and asked them to choose a treat: a pretzel stick, an Oreo cookie, or a marshmallow. Their treat of choice was placed on a table with a chair in front of it, and the children were told that they could have the treat right away or, if they waited for 15 minutes, they could get a second treat.

If you’ve ever been around kids, sweets, and willpower, you already know what happened: most of the kids ...