Dullness and distraction in creative work may arise from the same causes as in meditation

It sounds obvious in retrospect: Meditation instructors say all the time that the point is not to achieve attention and awareness just while in explicit meditation sessions, but to bring that same quality of mind to everyday life. I’d understood that in terms of recognizing Impermanence and Non-identification. But somehow I hadn’t connected that to problems I encounter when doing difficult creative work.

When I’m doing some difficult design or research, it’s very common for me to struggle with feelings of tiredness. I think this is just Dullness. And of course I often experience the progression of distraction -> forgetting -> mind-wandering, as described in Moments of consciousness model, after Culadasa.

These models help explain why I don’t wrestle with dullness or distraction/forgetting nearly as often when doing other activities. When I’m doing difficult creative work, I’m staring at the same object of attention for an extended period, just like in a meditation session; and just like the breath, the work rapidly ceases to produce novel stimuli. I’m staring at the same difficult paragraph I was staring at five minutes ago. And just as with the breath, when the object of attention is not generating many perceiving moments, the mind will naturally scan for other objects in awareness which might be more stimulating. Alternately (or additionally), the proportion of perceiving moments will simply drop, which in turn causes Dullness.

The cure for these problems in creative work is the same as the cure for these problems in meditation:

• cultivating continuous introspective awareness (e.g. through setting intention to audit attention every few breaths)
• cultivating heightened sensitivity to the object of attention, intention to perceive ever greater level of detail
• increasing the proportion of perceiving moments to create more buffer against dullness, e.g. by expanding the scope of awareness

Of course, the kind of distraction I’m describing here is mostly internal—the kind I generate for myself. Paul Graham points out that often, “distraction is not a static obstacle that you avoid like you might avoid a rock in the road. Distraction seeks you out.”

Q. In what sense do my meditation experiences explain my sleepiness-at-work experiences?
A. In both instances, you’re trying to maintain attention on a low-stimulation object; without training, the proportion of non-perceiving moments will climb.

Q. Why am I more likely to suffer from dullness and distraction when doing challenging creative work than in other activities?
A. When stuck on a creative problem, the object of attention isn’t naturally changing, so it generates increasingly subtle stimuli.