“Some wander more than others, but human ones wander a lot. A much-cited estimate, due to Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010), has it that the awake human mind spends from a third to half its time wandering.…The term ‘mind wandering,’ used as a construct in psychological theorizing, is relatively young. In a seminal paper, Smallwood and Schooler (2006) argued that research on disparate constructs—they mention task-unrelated thought, task-unrelated images, stimulus-independent thought, mind pops, and zone outs—could be unified under a single moniker.” (Shepherd, J. Why does the mind wander?. Oxford University Press, 2019)

“The students thinking about the brain during class would be considered to be ‘on task,’ while students thinking about things unrelated to the brain would be considered to be ‘mind wandering.’…At this point, you may wonder: are all responses to the world around us impaired during mind wandering? This seems unlikely, because we are usually quite capable of responding to the external environment even when we mind wander. For example, even though we may mind wander a lot while walking, most of us rarely bump into things as we walk from place to place.…In other words, our minds appear to be quite smart about which attention processes to disrupt and which processes to preserve during mind wandering. Under normal circumstances, our minds ignore some of the ordinary events in our environment in order for us to maintain a train of thought. However, when an unexpected event occurs in the environment, one that is potentially dangerous, our brain knows to shift our attention to the external environment so that we can respond to the potentially dangerous event.…even when the mind is wandering, we are still clever about what we ignore and what we pay attention to in the external environment, allowing us to smartly respond to the unusual, or potentially dangerous, events that may require us to focus our attention back on the external environment.” (Kam, J. The Wandering Mind: How the Brain Allows Us to Mentally Wander Off to Another Time and Place. Frontiers Media, 2017)

“[S]cience shows that mind wandering accounts for more than 45% of your waking hours every day.…Although it may seem counterproductive to spend nearly half of the time you’re awake with your head in the clouds, experts say otherwise.…‘‘Creativity requires broad, expansive mind wandering,’…During creative thinking, we explore our web of memories for new combinations and novel solutions. More specifically, creative thinking relies on a process we call incubation, where new ideas are generated and then evaluated. Mind wandering, and the cortical network that mediates it, called the brain’s default-mode network, is where such creative incubation takes place,’…According to a study published in 2019 in Psychological Science, 20% of the creative ideas occur during mind wandering or what the researchers called spontaneous task-independent thinking.…‘So a positive mood results in a broader mind wandering and broader mind wandering elicits a more positive mood,’ explains the neuroscientist. ‘So much so that we are currently using these findings to try to alleviate the symptoms of depression and other mood disorders by making individuals think more broadly and less ruminatively,’… Cognitive flexibility or cognitive shifting refers to your brain’s ability to adapt to new or varying situations. This includes the ability to approach new challenges creatively and roll with the curveballs. A recent study…found that the tendency to mind wander may be linked to cognitive flexibility.…another research reveals that mind wandering is associated with better problem solving, particularly in terms of flexibility and originality.…Even though it might feel counterintuitive, letting your mind meander can actually improve your performance and help you achieve your long-term goals effectively. What’s more, higher instances of daydreaming are also correlated to higher working memory.…in general, an open state of mind entails being more creative, open to thrills and risks for the sake of learning and exploring a wider perspective…On the other hand, a less happy mood is a better match for tasks that require focus or systematically attending to details—as a closed state of mind is characterized by more attention to details, better focus, behavior that gravitates toward the safe and comfortable routine and of the familiar,…‘There’s no right or wrong state to be in, we need them all. What’s more helpful is to acknowledge and optimize the match between your specific state of mind and the activities you choose to engage in while in that state,’” (Nazish, N. Why Mind Wandering Can Be Actually Good For You. Forbes Media, 2022)

“On the depressing side of the debate, Matt Killingsworth’s Track Your Happiness project concluded that mind-wandering makes us unhappy. His data showed that our minds wander 47% of the time, but that they almost always wander to negative thoughts and gets stuck in rumination.…In one of his papers, (Zachary) Irving explains the difference between guided attention, unguided attention and rumination. ‘Roughly speaking,’ he writes, ‘someone’s attention is guided if she would feel pulled back, were she distracted from her current focus.’ In contrast, when our thoughts wander they meander from one topic to another, so they are unguided. Mind-wandering may appear to be purposeless, but our thoughts have a surprising way of wandering to our goals.…Irving believes this is quite different from rumination, during which we are obsessively focused on our distress. He suggests that rumination is not mind-wandering at all, but a type of guided attention because the mind resists being distracted from it.…when thoughts started wandering participants had strong alpha waves in the frontal lobes.…alpha waves are slow brain waves that run at about 8-12 Hz and show up in the early part of sleep. Alpha waves are associated with being relaxed. So when the mind wanders the frontal lobes, which are responsible for focus and planning, go into a relaxed state.…the alpha waves that show up when our minds are wandering mean we are relaxing. And our brains cannot maintain focus and productivity without regular periods of relaxation. But there is another thing mind-wandering does for us. It may seem counterintuitive, but letting our thoughts drift can actually help us solve problems when focusing on them does not work. ‘If you focus all the time on your goals, you can miss important information. And so, having a free-association thought process that randomly generates memories and imaginative experiences can lead you to new ideas and insights,’” (Escalante, A. New Science: Why Our Brains Spend 50% Of The Time Mind-Wandering. Forbes Media, 2021)

“[U]nless you are a seasoned meditator, you will likely find your internal voice can take on a noise all of its own!” (Sokol, O. Practicing Calm: Benefits of a Silent Yoga Class. Art of LIfe Retreats, 2015)

“…[M]ind-wandering augments creativity—particularly ‘divergent thinking,’ or being able to come up with novel ideas.…mind-wandering may ‘serve as a foundation for creative inspiration.’…mind-wandering improved people’s creativity above and beyond the positive effects of their reading ability or fluid intelligence, the general ability to solve problems or puzzles. Mind-wandering seems to involve the default network of the brain, which is known to be active when we are not engaged directly in tasks and is also related to creativity.…Mind-wandering is particularly useful when work is mind-numbing. In one study, participants reported on their mind-wandering during a repetitive task. Participants who engaged in more mind-wandering performed better and faster, decreasing their response times significantly. The researchers speculated that mind-wandering allowed people to go off-task briefly, reset, and see data with fresh eyes—so that they didn’t miss sudden changes.…In another study, researchers aimed to figure out what parts of the brain were implicated in mind-wandering and discovered something unexpected. When their frontal lobes were stimulated with a small electrical current to boost mind-wandering, people’s performance on an attention task slightly improved.” (Suttie, J. How Mind-Wandering May Be Good For You. The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, 2018)

“Mind-wandering refers to thoughts that pop up spontaneously that aren’t connected to the task at hand or our surroundings,…‘For example, memories bubble up, or we find ourselves anticipating any number of future states of affairs.’…the main steps are to avoid responding to distractions or focusing on any specific task. ‘The whole goal is to shift into more of a reflective space,’ she said. ‘It’s not even so much driven by what you’re actually doing but by the head space you’re in.’…According to…the author of ‘Mindwandering: How Your Constant Mental Drift Can Improve Your Mood and Boost Your Creativity,’ mind-wandering is essential to creativity and problem-solving.…mind-wandering enhances creativity and may play a significant part in problem-solving and learning.…the less stressed we are, the further our minds can roam. The experiments also suggest that, in the absence of significant cognitive demands, original thinking is our ‘default setting.’ When subjects were given a free-association task while being asked simultaneously to perform cognitive tasks of varying levels of difficulty, there was an inverse relationship between mental load and the creativity of their responses.…Because mind-wandering promotes creativity, it can also have a positive effect on mood. The more creative you are, the more joy you can experience, and vice versa,…On the other hand, when your mind maintains a more narrow focus between similar thoughts, mind-wandering becomes rumination. And although some degree of rumination is normal, when it becomes chronic, it can lead to depression and anxiety,…Mind-wandering can also invite opportunities for serendipity and awe. ‘The world around us is filled with clues, opportunities and possibilities,’ Dane said, but we can take advantage of them only ‘ if we’re able to loosen ourselves from the grip of autopilot.’ One way to do that is maybe to put our phones aside; one study found that the presence of participants’ phones limited their cognitive resources, creating a ‘brain drain.’… Counterintuitively, mind-wandering may also help us get more done. Although we’d never expect our bodies to run all day long, Mecking said, ‘we somehow expect our brains to be on 24/7.’ The high value society places on productivity means we often keep working, even when we notice ourselves slowing down or making mistakes. But by preventing such issues, taking breaks might make us more productive. Meanwhile, Dane points out that, if our minds never strayed from the current task, we wouldn’t remember the other tasks we need to complete. Research shows a link between mind-wandering and the fulfillment of goals.…If guilt is keeping you from easing off the gas pedal, it might make sense to reexamine your values. ‘Because people value productivity and hard work,’ Mecking said, ‘they feel very, very bad when they do nothing. But what if we started to value free time and leisure, relaxation and doing nothing?’” (Moore, P. Here’s why you should let your mind wander—and how to set it free. Frontiers Media, 2017)

“There’s only so much we can hold into our working memory—the system our brain uses to temporarily hold information while we manipulate it. The amount of working memory we use at any given moment is called the cognitive load.…research has indeed confirmed our working memory is limited.” (Le Cunff, A. L. Productive Cognitive Load: Make the Most of Your Working Memory. Ness Labs)

“…Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) characterises our minds as information processing systems. When we’re working on a problem, especially an unfamiliar one, we depend on our ‘working memory’, which is very limited both in its capacity and the length of time it holds information. The less familiar you are with a task, the more you depend on your working memory to help juggle the relevant information; in contrast, when you’re an expert, most of what you need to know is stored in long-term memory and you can complete the task on auto-pilot.…research based in CLT has shown how emotions can interfere with information processing. When you’re anxious, for example, this is known to reduce working memory capacity, thus making it more difficult to work through any mental problem that requires conscious problem-solving (think of how exam nerves scramble your brain, making it tricky to work through maths questions or compose a coherent sentence; or how the stress of your driving test made it much harder to multitask than in your lessons).” (Jarrett, C. Cognitive Load Theory: Explaining our fight for focus. BBC, 2020)

“The ‘thinking mind’ is…limited by multiple cognitive bottlenecks.…these cognitive bottlenecks limit how much information we can process at one time, how many tasks we can simultaneously focus on, and how many parameters we can consider while making a decision.…we tend to overestimate our cognitive capacities—our ability to concurrently process multiple streams of information or to work on several tasks at the same time.…But our thinking mind is limited by two Big Bad Bottlenecks: our attention and our working memory.…researchers…have identified a unified attentional bottleneck in the human brain, which impacts both perception and action. Simply put, we’re bad at dividing our attention between different tasks.…Working memory is the second major cognitive bottleneck that limits our thinking mind. It allows us to retain multiple pieces of information for short-term processing.…working memory is extremely limited in capacity and duration, which can impact learning and decision-making.…‘Humans are endowed with remarkable cognitive capacities but one area where we are seriously limited is working memory. Working memory is the mental space where we do conscious, active thinking—and that space has limited capacity.…A fundamental problem in learning is that working memory is a bottleneck—everything new that we learn has to go through working memory before we can commit it to permanent or long term memory,’…Everyone will have different profiles for levels of attention and working memory, and your cognitive capacities also vary throughout the day and throughout the years. Being aware of the existence of these cognitive bottlenecks can help you avoid being overconfident in your cognitive capacities, and to make more sound decisions at work and in your daily life.…Instead of blaming yourself anytime you notice you’re distracted, gently bring back your attention to the task at hand. If it keeps on happening, simply take a short break to recharge your mental batteries. Calmly acknowledge and accept your feelings and thoughts while engaged in work or creative activities.…cognitive bottlenecks…are just characteristics of our mind we need to consider when we plan our work and interact with the world.” (Le Cunff, A. L. Cognitive bottlenecks: the inherent limits of the thinking mind. Ness Labs)

“Cognitive Workload is the user’s perceived level of mental effort that is influenced by many factors, particularly task load and task design.…Low workload levels are associated with boredom and decreased attention to task, whereas high workload levels are associated with increased error rates and the narrowing of attention to the possible detriment of other information or tasks (Sheridan, 2002). Humans perform best when they are neither bored nor overburdened, and when periods of work and rest are equitably mixed together.” (Cognitive Workload. NASA Office of the Chief Health & Medical Officer (OCHMO), 2021)

“High load/low load threshold refers to the amount of working memory” (Crowe, K. Cognitive Psych Exam 1. Quizlet, 2022)

“The discussion of efficiency versus capacity has important implications for academic and life function. In the case of academic reading, when a person is more regulated so that they don’t need to use as many resources for decoding words and grammar, there are more resources available for comprehending new knowledge, integrating the new knowledge with already existing knowledge in long term memory, as well as forming inferences regarding that new knowledge. Thus, one could say that a person is working more efficiently than someone who needs more working memory resources for decoding words and grammar. The effort involved in each of the aforementioned skills places a strain on the brain’s processing capacity. That is to say, each of these add to a person’s cognitive load during the effortful process of reading. Cognitive load considerations. Another concept related to working memory that is of particular importance given the size constraints of working memory capacity versus efficiency is that of cognitive load. Cognitive load theory makes the assertion that all learning environments and tasks impose processing demands on working memory to some greater or lesser degree (Sweller, van Merrienboer, & Paas, 1998). Once a person’s cognitive load threshold has been met cognitive overload commences, and information processing efficiency decreases until cognitive load is dropped below the threshold and a person’s recovery time has been met.” (Hamilton, N. J. Interactive Effects of Working Memory Self-Regulatory Ability and Relevance Instructions on Text Processing. Digital Scholarship@UNLV, 2012)

“Cognitive Load and Medical Error…Even highly intelligent people can reach their cognitive load threshold very quickly, and your best staff can create medical error as a result.” (Privitera, M. & MacNamee, K. Integrating Organizational Actions Toward Patient Safety & Clinician Wellbeing: Budgeting clinician cognitive resources strategically in healthcare delivery. American Medical Association, 2021)

“A Cognitive Overload is, by definition, a situation where one is given too much information at once, or too many simultaneous tasks, resulting in not being able to perform or process the information as it would otherwise happen if the amount was instead sustainable.…No matter how keen a mind is, it has a limit to how much new knowledge it can process in a given amount of time. A strong cognitive load or a wave of complicated subjects can push the human cognitive architecture beyond its limits. ” (Cognitive Overload. Talking HealthTech, 2021)

“Lacroix defines a mental burden, or a cognitive load, as ‘the cost of processing information in most given circumstances for an individual’.…2 x 2 + 1 and then 22 x 15 + 3. ‘It is clear that the amount of mental effort required, and the resulting cognitive load, is larger for the second calculation,’…‘In cognitive overload, we increase our chances of making errors and of having memory problems, plus it can reduce our ability to plan, to deal with our emotions, and so on. Signs of a cognitive overload include making mistakes, having to start thought processes over and over again, not paying attention to others, or regularly forgetting important things.’…‘Our attention span is a natural filter against cognitive overload. It allows us to select relevant information according to the task we would like to perform and leave the rest out of our working memory. However, this attention span is sensitive and it can easily get absorbed by other external demands, whether they are physical, such as in an open-plan office environment, or digital, through notifications.’” (Sayagh, E. Heads up, here’s how to deal with cognitive overload at work. Welcome to the Jungle, 2022)

“Your brain has limited attentional resources. If you have ever tried to focus on multiple things at once, you have likely discovered you could not fully pay attention to all of them. In some cases, you might even notice that some things seem to simply slide past you unnoticed.…Because attention is limited, focusing on the first target depletes these limited resources, essentially making the observer blind to the second target.…There are a few different theories that seek to explain the attentional blink.…Another popular theory is the two-stage processing theory. According to this idea, processing a series of items involves two different stages. The first stage involves noticing the targets, while the second involves actually processing the items so that they can be reported.…The attentional blink might be tiny, but it can certainly have serious consequences in real-world settings.” (Cherry, K. Why Does Attentional Blink Happen?. Verywell Mind, 2020)

“The cocktail-party effect refers to the ability to focus one’s attention a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli (i.e., noise).” (The Cocktail Party Effect. American Academy of Audiology, 2021)

“Despite many models of attention based on auditory stimuli, some research suggests that the ‘cocktail party’ phenomenon also occurs with visual information.” (Cocktail Party Effect. Wikipedia)

“The bottleneck theory suggests that individuals have a limited amount of attentional resources that they can use at one time. Therefore, information and stimuli are ‘filtered’ somehow so that only the most salient and important information is perceived.…if we perceived every visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile sense all at once all of the time our brains would be overflowing.…How does the bottleneck work? What is filtered out? Broadbent proposed early selection—that physical characteristics of messages are used to select one message for further processing and all others are lost.…Deutsch & Deutsch proposed that all messages get through, but that only one response can be made which was coined late selection.…Treisman proposed attenuation which suggests that physical characteristics are used to select one message for full processing and other messages are given partial processing.” (Kaufman, D. Bottleneck Theory. AlleyDog.com)

“…[T]he early/late selection debate.…relates to the ‘cocktail party problem’: how do people at a cocktail party select the conversation they are listening to and ignore the others? The models of attention proposed prior to Lavie’s theory differed in their proposals for the point in the information processing stream where the selection of target information occurs, leading to a heated debate about whether the selection occurs ‘early’ or ‘late’. There were also arguments about to what degree distracting stimuli are processed.…‘cocktail party problem’…: at a cocktail party how do people select the conversation that they are listening to and ignore the rest?…[S]ubjects take in very little of the information supplied…they are not focusing on.…(Donald Broadbent’s) filter model of attention…suggests that humans process information with limited capacity, and therefore information must be selected by a sensory filter soon after it is received. All information in the filter that is not directly attended to will decay. In contrast, Deutsch and Deutsch argued that this filtering of irrelevant stimuli occurs in the late stages of processing: all of the information is processed on a sensory level, but the semantic content of the message in the unattended ear cannot access the consciousness.…Lavie attempted to resolve the early/late selection debate by arguing that both early and late selection occur depending on the stimulus presented. She introduced the concept of perceptual load, referring to the complexity of the physical stimuli, particularly the distractor stimuli. For example, searching for a lone square in a scene among surrounding circles involves relatively low perceptual load; whereas a square surrounded by many different shapes would require higher perceptual load to locate.…Perceptual load theory makes three main assumptions: [a]ttentional resources are limited in capacity; [t]ask-relevant stimuli are processed before task-irrelevant stimuli; [a]ll of the attentional resources must be used. Thus, if the task-relevant stimulus uses all the attentional resources, none of the task-irrelevant stimuli (distractors) will be processed. In high-load tasks the target’s attentional resources are depleted faster than in a low-load task. The target will therefore be selected sooner and the distractors will be quickly filtered out. In a low-load task, more of the distractors will be processed because the attentional resources have not been exhausted, and the filtering step will occur later. In a low-load situation the distractors will be perceived, potentially causing an interference. In this model, selection occurs both in the early stages of processing (high-load condition) and in the late stages (low-load condition).” (Perceptual load theory. Wikipedia)

“Picture this: a teen-ager, cruising down a familiar highway, keeping a conscientious eye on the speedometer, the rear view mirror, the oncoming traffic. Too late, he notices a deer standing in the road. He slams on the brakes but can’t avoid striking the animal.…[S]tudies of visual perception have demonstrated how startlingly little people see when we’re not paying attention, a phenomenon known as ‘inattentional blindness.’ ‘…We feel like we’ve got all the details of the things going on around us,…[b]ut my bet is that most of the time people are really focused on one goal at a time.’…[W]hen experimenters put something unexpected but important in pilots’ field of vision, such as an airplane on the runway, pilots often miss such objects.” (Carpenter, S. Sights Unseen. American Psychological Association, 2001)

“Sometimes selective attention can go too far, resulting in attention tunneling. Colloquially called tunnel vision, this condition occurs when a pilot fixates on a specific input while becoming oblivious to all other incoming information. All attention resources become dedicated to a single input from one information source. This could be a specific location or specific readout on a display, or it could be some object outside the aircraft. In many cases, stress, workload and fatigue can increase the likelihood of tunnel vision.” (Rash C. E. Attention on Deck. Flight Safety Foundation, 2012)

“The human brain has a limit on how much information it can process at once due to a finite energy supply,…UK neuroscientists say that energy supply to the brain remains constant and can’t exceed an upper limit, however challenging a task is. But as the brain uses more energy in processing the task at hand, less energy is supplied to processing outside our immediate focus,…This results in what’s known as ‘inattentional blindness’ — when stimuli that’s available in plain sight doesn’t register, even if it’s valuable to us. This can help explain why we are sometimes unable to concentrate on what our family members are telling us while we’re playing video games or watching TV.…The brain allocates less energy to the nerve cells, known as neurons, that respond to information outside the focus of our attention as the task gets harder,…The brain constantly uses around 20 per cent of our metabolic energy, even while we’re resting our mind during sleep. This constant but limited supply of energy does not increase when there is more for our mind to process, however. ‘It takes a lot of energy to run the human brain,…If there’s a hard limit on energy supply to the brain, we suspected that the brain may handle challenging tasks by diverting energy away from other functions, and prioritising the focus of our attention.…the brain does indeed allocate less energy to the neurons that respond to information outside the focus of our attention when our task becomes harder. This explains why we experience inattentional blindness and deafness even to critical information that we really want to be aware of.’ Focusing our attention on a particular task or thought can change how the brain allocates its limited energy,…As the brain uses more energy in processing what we attend to, less energy is supplied to processing outside our attention focus.…The tasks at hand, which were either defined as ‘complex’ or ‘simple’, was known as the ‘attended’ stimuli. These tasks were sometimes run in parallel with a visual distraction that was irrelevant to the task — known as the ‘unattended’ stimuli. They found levels of cellular metabolism in brain areas that responded to the task at hand rose as the task became more complex. These increases were directly mirrored with reduced cellular metabolism levels in areas responding to unattended stimuli. This ‘push-pull pattern’ was closely synchronised, showing a trade-off of limited energy supply between attended and unattended brain processing. ‘We have managed to connect people’s experience of brain overload to what’s going on inside their neurons, as high energy demands for one purpose are balanced out by reduced energy use related to any other purpose,…If we try to process too much information we may feel the strain of overload because of the hard limit on our brain capacity. When your brain is at capacity, you are likely to fail to process some information — you might not even notice an important email come in because your child was speaking to you, or you might miss the oven timer go off because you received an unexpected work call. Our findings may explain these often-frustrating experiences of inattentional blindness or deafness.’…The two psychology professors often explore the limits of visual attention — in particular how people regularly fail to spot the obvious.”(Chadwick, J. People are oblivious to distractions when focusing on a specific task because the human brain has a ‘limit’ on how much information it can process at once. Daily Mail, 2020)

“When you focus hard on one thing, such as the actions of the main character in a film, you might not notice unexpected things entering your visual field.…As our attentional, cognitive, and processing resources are limited, relying on schemas allows us to dedicate these resources to what matters most while still allowing us to have complete, seamless experiences.” (Cherry, K. Inattentional Blindness in Psychology. Verywell Mind, 2020)

“What our eyes can’t see, the brain fills in…[O]ur brains predict what cannot be seen by drawing on our previous experiences to build up an accurate picture.…When direct input from the eye is obstructed, the brain still predicts what is likely to be present behind the object by using some of the other inputs to come up with best ‘guesses’.…[P]redictive coding (or free energy principle)…suggests the brain actively predicts what input it will receive, rather than just passively processing information as it arrives.…If you are driving a car and a pedestrian is suddenly obscured—say by a pillar box or your rear view mirror—your brain still knows where they are and where they will reappear in your line of vision. Without that ability, we would be lost in everyday life.” (What Our Eyes Can’t See, the Brain Fills In. The University of Glasgow, 2011)

“Distractions are often associated with negative outcomes however; distractions can also benefit people. Using the hypothesis of internal-external distractions in the competition for cue, this study examined the effects of an active (controlled) and passive (uncontrolled) distraction on three endurance tasks.…Results showed that active distraction significantly improved performance and lowered Rate of Perceived Exertion in one task.” (Couture, R. T. Can Intentional Distractions Affect Endurance Performance Positively?. Diversity of Research in Health Journal / Revue de la Diversité de la Recherche en Santé Vol 4, 2021)

“…[F]rom a psychological perspective, exactly what is a distraction? Basically, any activity that occupies the thinking mind so that it can’t brood or obsess about something else. Optimally, it induces a sort of pseudo-hypnotic state that lulls the cognitive brain into a blur. The distracting activity occupies one’s awareness and all else fades into the background.…Often, a benign distraction de-stresses the psyche, turns off one’s incessant inner chatter, allows imagination to bubble to the surface, and helps us manage pain and unhealthy impulses. Sure, we can be distracted too much. But, as my client discovered, we can also be distracted too little.” (Chard, P. The Power of Distraction. Shepherd Express, 2023)

“With my clients, I encourage the use of social media as an intentional distraction when their bodies are overwhelmed, their minds are racing, and they need a way to take a break from their emotions. It allows the body to get out of fight-or-flight and settle back into a more relaxed and regulated space. Once this happens, clients are better able to work through their emotions in a more deliberate, thoughtful, and engaged way.” (Mani, D. Social Media is Distracting—and That Can Be a Good Thing. Octave Health Group, 2022)

“Don’t pay attention to the thoughts in detail. Let them scroll by, do not cling to them or reject them. ” (Comaford, C. Got Inner Peace? 5 Ways To Get It NOW. Forbes Media, 2012)