The Power of Forgetting by Mike Byster

focus, and the consequences can be huge. In the grander scheme, little mistakes here and there can accumulate, affecting your performance at work or your personal reputation.
    We’re all aware of how our modern society presents challenges to maintaining focus and concentration. We’ve fallen victim to absentmindedness and being scatterbrained thanks to that errant e-mail or phone call. Or we’ve made mistakes due to interruptions and distractions while we try to complete a task. Rather than center on the negative here, let’s turn this into a positive and dive right into strengthening your focus and concentration no matter how weak and distractible they are. This means reinforcing your “forgetting” muscles so you can train your precious mental energy on important tasks at hand. Being able to forget nonessentials is a critical part of maximizing focus and concentration. I will ask that you avoid all other interferences as you read forward. Turn your cell phone off. Get comfortable in a roomand see if you can spend just a few minutes now bringing all of your attention to the upcoming pages. What we’re going to do is (1) test the strength of your focus and concentration, (2) make you more aware of when you lose your focus and concentration, and (3) develop ways to build your ability to focus and concentrate. Ready?

TESTING, TESTING, ONE-TWO-THREE
    Below is a sentence. I want you to read it once and concentrate on what it says while counting the number of
f
’s. (Alert: This exercise is meant to be done only once—right now—and that’s it!)
    A scientific study of fossils was conducted in the laboratory of Jonathan Frank .
    Now look away from this page and recall how many
f
’s you counted. One? Two? Three? Four?
    The purpose of this exercise is to show how hard it can be to force the brain to perform two different tasks at the same time: comprehend and count. If you’re like most people, you may have found two or three
f
’s. Maybe you culled four. But there are actually a total of five. It’s common to miss a few of these
f
’s, especially to skip ones in the small words, such as “of.” The mind is naturally inclined to skip the small words and focus on the large words.
    We know that the larger words will tell us the important part of the sentence—they are what provides the key thought, whereas the little words are the links, the trivial connectors. Additionally, it’s human nature to think of the “of” as an “uv” rather than a word with a sharp-sounding
f
. When we say “of” in our minds it sounds like we’re saying “uv.” So we hear a
v
and forget that it’s in fact an
f
!
    But there’s something else going on here that I want you to notice: Did you find it hard to focus on the meaning of the sentence while counting the
f
’s? Right now, can you explain what the sentence conveyed? Or are you having to go back and reread the sentence, this time without counting anything?
    Many of us multitask all day long. So why can’t we multitask at this level? Why can’t we count the
f
’s and soak up the meaning of the information? As it turns out, these two tasks start to compete with each other when we simultaneously count and comprehend. It’s hard to do both at the same time. Molecular biologist and University of Washington professor John Medina explains the reason why in his book
Brain Rules:
    Multitasking, when it comes to paying attention, is a myth. The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a time. At first that might sound confusing; at one level the brain does multitask. You can walk and talk at the same time. Your brain controls your heartbeat while you read a book. Pianists can play a piece with the left hand and right hand simultaneously. Surely this is multitasking. But I am talking about the brain’s ability to pay attention. It is the resource you forcibly deploy while trying to listen to a boring lecture at school. It is the activity that collapses as your