樂，學中文、教中文。/Enjoy learning &Teaching Chinese

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170925-the-surprising-tricks-to-help-you-focus-at-work

By Caroline Williams卡洛琳·威廉姆斯

25 September 2017

加大難度

想要適度集中精力，就必須擺脫所有分散精力的外部因素，對嗎？一個頗具影響的注意力理論認為，事實恰恰相反。

Make it harder

To concentrate properly you must get rid of all external distractions, right? Actually, according to one influential theory of attention, the opposite is true.

倫敦大學學院心理學家尼利·拉維（Nilli Lavie）在1995年得出了"負荷理論"（Load Theory）。她認為，我們的大腦在任意時間內所能處理的外界資訊是有限的——一旦這些處理"槽"都被填滿，大腦就會啟動注意力系統來決定應該關注哪些事情。

Nilli Lavie, a psychologist at University College London, came up with what she calls ‘Load Theory’ in 1995. The idea is that there is a limit to how much information from the outside world our brains can process at any one time – once all of these processing ‘slots’ have been filled, the brain’s attention system kicks in to decide what to focus on.

拉維的實驗認為，最好不要在乾淨整潔、寂靜無聲的環境中工作，而應該選擇雜亂不清的地方。之所以這樣，是因為一旦所有的知覺槽都被佔據，大腦就必須集中所有能量關注最重要的任務。干擾因素都會被排除在外。

Lavie’s experimentssuggest we might be better to work not in clean, tidy and silent surroundings, but in those that are messy and confusing. It works because once all the perceptual slots have been taken up, the brain has to pour all its energies into focusing on the most important task. Distractions simply get screened out.

然而，在付諸實踐的過程中面臨的問題在於，如何找到合適的干擾因素，避免發生過猶不及。像ommwriter或focus@will這樣的應用程式都能加入視覺和音樂干擾因素，但卻沒有一款接受過科學檢驗，所以實際效果可能還不如直接打開收音機。

The problem with putting this into practice, however, is finding the right kind of distraction and keeping it on the right side of being overwhelming. There are a few apps, such as ommwriter or focus@will, that add visual or musical distractions to order, but so far none have been tested in scientific studies and may be no better than putting the radio on.

關鍵在於給自己找到思維足夠多的事情去做，讓你的大腦沒有機會到其他地方尋找刺激。對多數人來說，或許要通過不斷試錯才能找到適合自己的方法，但由於排除干擾可能令人疲倦，所以應該慎用這種方法，只有在其他方法都失效的情況下才可以考慮。

The key is to give your mind just enough to do, so that your brain doesn't have the chance to look elsewhere for stimulation. For most people it might be a case of trial and error to find what works for them, but since screening out distractions can be tiring, perhaps this is one to use sparingly, when all else has failed.