Distractability: Food for Thought

The power of distraction. It can take a heavy beating on several areas of your life, well, my life really. Work, chores, a nice conversation over the phone with a dear friend. I can get distracted without even realizing I'm being distracted. But, isn't that what distraction is? A momentary pause, a delay in your normal everyday workflow? I was reading an article in the magazine Real Simple and it was titled the Memory Game. One quote I read that really struck my fancy made me stop and think:

"The problem with being distracted is that we inhabit daily experience in an absent-minded mode. Therefore, we have more difficulty forming strong memories, as if the passing moment didn't leave enough of a trace."

Amen, sister! I mean seriously! Amen, Daphne Merkin! Isn't that so true!? I was beginning to think a dose of Aricept, the Alzheimer's medication I pushed for three years, would have to start to become part of my daily regimen. How is it that I have such vivid memories of whining to my mother for letting my little sister rewind and play Winnie-the-Pooh for the upteenth time on a Saturday afternoon, when I was only five years old? Yet, today, I get up from the kitchen and walk into the garage only to become completely bewildered as to why I had gone in there in the first place.

Unfortunately for our generation, our every existence has demanded our attention in so many different areas at once. From phone calls on our mobile phone, to emails, text messages, twitter and FaceBook, etc. The multi-tasking reality that inevitably is, happens to take place within all of us as a daily occurrence. Even those who don't consider themselves as "tech savvy" or are only known as "uni-taskers"are still somewhat involved in this fast-paced, highly digital, place we call world.

Let's take for example, myself. I'm a bright, independent young woman who should have all of her marbles within reach, right? Wrong. It doesn't quite work that way. Due to the nature of my career, social circle, and multi-tasking lifestyle I have become accustomed to, I am ALWAYS distracted. During a conversation on the phone I figured hey, why not clean house while I'm finishing my afternoon chat. Kill two birds with one stone! Within the first eight minutes of the phone call, I not only had to ask the person on the other line to repeat themselves several times because clearly, I wasn't paying attention, but I also proceeded to clean my entire, brand new, mahogany Pottery Barn dining table with Goo-Gone! After a muted residue formed on the surface of the table, I realized I was not using the Murphy's Oil I had intended to use. Yes, both are a sticky orange substance, but with quite different uses. Take the next day, my roommate found 409 cleaner in the refrigerator, that was my doing. How do you accidentally put kitchen cleaner next to the orange juice? It doesn't even look right! Again, distracted. The following weekend, I discovered yet another incidence of moving too quickly through life without allowing my brain to catch up. I walked through the gym parking lot on a sunny Saturday only to discover I was wearing two completely different tennis shoes. They didn't look alike at all. Not even a little bit. I took a picture for proof.

So even though I write this now, feeling a little sorry for myself for what I have become, deep down I know I'm not alone. So many people, probably mostly pre-menopausal women, are struggling with the same thing I am. But my question is, how do we slow down and take in each memory so that it settles into the gray matter of our brain mass? Does it really take stopping to smell the roses in order to make a memory? And if so, is it even possible in the multi-tasking universe we live in? I sure hope so.