How Do I Stay Focused? with Dr. Jeff Hutchinson (Part 1)

Today teens continue to endure a life-changing crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic. Mental health issues have reached a critical breaking point. ER childhood mental health visits continue to be at epidemic proportions, high schools students have felt sad or depressed through the pandemic. More than 3,000 students attempt suicide each and every day.

Dr. Jeff Hutchinson,  a retired US Army Colonel and Adolescent Medicine specialist, has 25 years of experience caring for children, teens, young adults and service members. His unique approach combines the science of behavioral economics with the methodology of helping teens and parents communicate. He is an advocate for addressing the social determinants of health disparities and has published in several academic journals. 

In Part 1 of this two-part episode, Dr. Hutch  shares several key concepts with the All Teens Considered audience including what it means to be in “flow” and how to avoid the fear of missing out (FOMO).

Listen now to hear Dr. Hutch discuss practical ways teens can better their mental health through staying focused.

Transcript

(INTRO MUSIC)

Welcome - Host Gillian Parker (00:04)

Hey! Welcome to the All Teens Considered podcast. I'm your host... Gillian Parker.

Beyond self-help, the purpose of All Teens Considered (ATC) is to explore what teens are thinking and feeling. We actually survey our audience to hear from real young people and invite mental health professionals to get scientific and expert advice. 

We want to change the stigma around mental health by making mental health education interesting, relatable, actionable, and totally normal. 

All Teens Considered is not a replacement for therapy or personalized advice but we hope it provides some insight into issues that you or your friends might be dealing with.

If you are a teenager listening right now, this podcast is for you, and we want to hear from you. What issues or topics do you want to see covered? How could we make ATC better for you?

Share your thoughts by texting 512-537-1778.
 
Guest Dr. Jeff Hutchinson Introduction (01:02)

Today our guest is Jeff Hutchinson. He's a retired US Army Colonel currently in private practice as a pediatrician in the Austin, TX area. Not only is he an expert in physical health, but he also uses the science of behavior to help parents and teenagers develop healthy communication. 

He has spent 25 years caring for children, teens and young adults and today he'll be drawing on his expertise to help us work through ways to stay focused.

Host Ben Marullo (01:30)
 
All right, Dr. Jeff, thank you so much for coming on Mental Muscle [now known as the All Teens Considered podcast]. 

Today we're talking about staying focused and grounded in a very turbulent world. Now, as somebody who's both a doctor focused on adolescent health and from a military background, as a retired US Army Colonel, what does it mean to be focused and grounded? And why is that important?

Guest Dr. Jeff Hutchinson (01:55)

 Great. Thanks for having me, Ben. It is important focus because when our attention is divided in many different directions, we can't do any of it well.

I always like telling people that there's really no such thing as multitasking. We switch back and forth between things really quickly. Young people are great at switching like that, but it is a proven fact. We can't do anything as well as when we focus on one thing versus when we try to go back and forth between things.
 
 And the example I like to use is trying to read two pages at the same time. You can't. You can only read one page at a time. So, you're not multitasking. You're going back and forth between two different tasks. And it's important to be able to focus in order to do the task you want to do well.

 Ben (02:46)
 
I feel like we live in a world where multitasking is glorified. I think for a lot of people, myself included, it's difficult to pinpoint the one thing that you really enjoy doing that you're good at. So, you try to do a bunch of different things. 

Dr. Hutch (03:00)

We always want to know how busy people are, right? How many projects, how many things you're doing, but we never really ask how well you did that one thing. 

So, I love to hear more when my patients and young people tell me that they're really focused on one thing. They really do one thing well. I love to hear them say, this is what I'm really good at because I spend a lot of time doing this one thing.

Ben (03:25)

What do you think about someone who is sort of multifaceted? Do you think that there's value in learning a lot of different skills or would you say it's better to focus on one skill?

 Dr. Hutch (03:37)
 
Absolutely. There is a saying about the fox and the hedgehog. The fox knows many things and the hedgehog knows one. And it brings up the idea that if you focus on just one thing that you are good at, then you're going to succeed. But you can take it from the other point of view. The fox who knows many different things will survive in all sorts of different environments. The reality of which one is better, depends on the situation.

To your point about exploring and getting involved with many different things. When you're young, that is the exact right way to do it. You must learn many different skills. You must experience many different things because you don't know what you're good at until you try it or explore those things. 

I'm a big proponent of trying to explore and figure out and to do many different things. And when you realize what you're good at, that's when you start to focus and hone your skills and talent on the thing that you are good at.

When you do a job that doesn't feel like a job that means you enjoy it. That means that it doesn't feel like work. It feels like time just goes by. You talk about “flow” or  “in the moment”. You have no idea how much time has passed. That is a great example of when you know that you have found something that really is important to you. 
 
There's the scholar Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [Me-high Cheek-sent-me-high]. He coined the term “flow”. His theory about how we get so sucked into something is what a lot of us have experienced. People sometimes playing video games, playing music, reading, they just look up suddenly, and they've been doing it for hours. 

When you find an activity, something that just takes you into that spot, that is what really is a good example of something that you might be good at and might be worth pursuing. 

Ben (05:50)

When you say you look up and you've been doing it for hours and you don't realize how much time you spent, you know what that reminds me of? Social media, Instagram and scrolling. The most obvious culprit are these platforms that are so pervasive and addicting that are essentially selling our attention. Studies have found that higher levels of social media use are correlated with self-reported declines in mental and physical health and life satisfaction.

That's especially bad with the youth. But the real issue to me is more about access than the product itself. We have these addicting platforms on the same tools that we use for important work that we need to accomplish, like your smartphone, your computer. We can't just lock these things up in a drawer until the end of our workday anymore.
 
 This is even more exasperated by COVID and work working from home. We've always had to battle temptation and distraction, but it feels like today technology is making it harder than ever because we can't physically distance ourselves from it.
 
 So, the question is, how do we use the same tools that can be harmful in a positive and productive way?
 
Dr. Hutch (07:00)
 
I'm so glad you brought that up. You actually hit on a, a couple of important points. One, a lot of times parents will see their young people on TikTok or playing a video game and think, wow, they must have a great attention span because they can focus on it for so long. 
 
But the reality is exactly what you said. All these platforms are trying to get our attention. What gets our attention is not the same activity over and over. It's the newness. It's the change in activity. You go from one face to a new face. One has music, one doesn't. All those things are like turning a channel. And each time you're trying to get a new stimulus. You may be doing it for hours, but you're not actually showing focus. You're breaking apart a lot of different pulls for your attention.

It's exactly like that task switching we talked about a second ago when you switch from task to task to task. You can do that for a long period of time, but that is not building your ability to have focused and prolonged attention.
 
 Your question about what can we do to use those tools in a positive, productive way? First, we must look at how those tools got to the point they are. How did they become so prevalent and able to hold onto our attention for so long? And it's by realizing that with a short attention span, you must give different stimulus and different input.
 
 I look at watching a movie versus watching a play, right? When you're at a movie, the scene will change every three to five seconds. So that is a way of refocusing the attention and giving a new stimulus.
 
 When you're at a play, you are watching someone up on a stage, but you can look at a different actor, look at a different character, look at different scenes. If we want to help people to develop that sense of focus, that that attention we must realize, we can't just give them one input to look at. We must change the input, but we must always try and bring people back to the same purpose of why they're there in the first place.
 
 Regathering attention, getting people to see, the importance of the tasks they're doing, takes work and it competes against other things that are pulling at our attention. And you only get there by prolonged and sustained practice.
 
 And things that you can do to do that include reading. Reading is looking at the words in a book and you are using your imagination. But you're doing the same task for a prolonged period. Doing Sudoku, doing one puzzle over a long period of time, that builds attention as opposed to every minute and a half looking at a brand-new video.

Ben (10:01)

 There's a lot of buzz about this right now. We saw the Social Dilemma premier on Netflix at the end of 2020. Harris has been fantastic on all kinds of talk shows discussing the algorithms and the way that they work.

It feels like we're battling this behemoth of technology that we've just never had to deal with before. And what I'm thinking now is with, as I mentioned with COVID, you're stuck between a rock and a hard place because you've got more access to it and you don't know how to limit it. 
 
 We know that practicing keeping your attention helps and reading helps. What is something that we can do to just get away from the platforms? I have all of my social media apps in a folder in the back of my phone, but I'm still finding myself scrolling to go and open them. What do you think?

Dr. Hutch (11:02)
 
Some of the tools that are out there that help people: 

Tip 1 – It's been shown if you make your screen black and white, that makes it less appealing, less attractive. You're less likely to keep going from screen to screen just because it's not as interesting. 

Tip 2 – If you decrease the sound or even turn off the sound, that can help make some of those applications even less exciting. You'd be surprised how tuned we are to the buzzes and bells that happen. And that little sound can be positive feedback too. 

Tip 3 – And that's the next thing. Turn off your notifications. If you look at the default for many of these apps, the first thing they ask is “Can we send you notifications?” Say no to that. You don't need to be notified that there's an update for your game.

Ben (11:50)
 
Those are definitely good suggestions. 
 
How concerned, from a medical standpoint, are you about the Millennial Generation or Gen X growing up with these kinds of technologies that we haven't studied a whole lot? 

In terms of how their brain is changing and how they're able to focus on other things? 
 Do you think that this is having a lasting effect?

Dr. Hutch (12:15)
 
If you want to be even more strict about it, turn off your text notifications. That's a hard one, right? Cause we, we want to know when someone texts us. But do you really need to text people back immediately? 

I do understand the reality of being young and your friends will get mad at you if you don't text them back quickly. But they will also learn that if I text Ben, he may not answer me immediately. It may take a little while. 

It's a hard thing to do, but turning off notifications, making your screens less attractive, putting things in a folder, that's just not at the first homepage. All those things do slow you down and make you not as likely to use and get stuck on those. 
 
The other thing that can help too, but it's also very difficult and it's sometimes what parents need to do to help young people, is actual timers. A bell or something that goes off that says you've been on for a certain amount of time. TikTok tries to do that, right?
 
 Wie does that. When that first came out, it had a reminder “You've been playing for a long period of time. Maybe it's time for a break.” Those are great ways to start, but they're also very easy to scroll onto the next screen and to ignore them too.
 
 Humans are the most adaptable species on the planet, I believe. And because there's so many of us, people adapt in different ways. As a medical professional, I'm a little worried that some of the adaptations, some of the things may not be as helpful. And I also see that it's not equal across different groups. You know, some people who don't have the same technology are being left behind. People who don't have the same social determinants of health are going to be impacted more negatively.
 
 Of course, I am a little worried, but I'm an optimist. I really believe that the world will change whether we want it to or not. And that we can do things to help move change in a positive direction and to help people who may be left behind as things change. If that's our desire.
 
 Now, it's very easy to say "the strongest will survive" and everyone else that's just too bad. But if we are really in a community, if we really care about each other, we are going to do what we can to help as many people up and to accommodate as many people as possible. 
 
 And I really do believe that, that we have the capability to adapt even as we, we see that people are losing attention in things that we used to value like reading books and just sitting quietly.

Ben (15:08)
 
What do you think is the root of the issue of what is really taking our focus away? 

Dr. Hutch (15:15)
 
I think there are two big things. The first one is access. Before the internet, when you talk about when I was a kid, you had a limited number of channels on TV. You had to stand up to change the channel. And now the moment you roll out of bed, you have the internet at your fingertips on your phone. You can look at millions of different sites. The availability, the ability to look at different things that have different stimulus, to be impacted by all the things that this world has to offer is here and it's not going to change. That is one of the big keys to why there's so much distraction right now because it's available.
 
The second thing that leads to the changes we've seen has to do with our culture and our peers. If one group is doing something that you consider part of your peer group, then that is how culture spreads. That's how certain activities continue. If a new service comes out and no one knows about it, it has no impact. 

If a new social media platform exists and everyone's talking about it and everyone wants to be part of it. The fear of missing out (FOMO) is real. And people will want to learn about it, participate in it, you know.
 
 Ask where My Space is where it is today because we moved on to other things. And if we don't expect that to keep happening, we're going to miss out. You know, Facebook won't be around forever. Twitter won't be around forever. There'll be something new.
 
 We must be prepared to realize that, as a group, as a culture, we're going to move towards the things that attract the most people.

Ben (17:08)

It's hard to imagine a world without these kinds of tech giants right now. What do you think the role of stress plays into focus and concentration?

Dr. Hutch (17:21)

That is a perfect segue to one of the points I always like to make. You never go to the grocery store when you're hungry, right? When you're stressed, when you're angry, when you're hungry, all those things affect the decisions that we make. And we must identify those. We must realize that. The more stress you have, the more emotions you have, the more strain on your body, the harder it is to make a good decision.

There's the Stanford Marshmallow Test. It is something that's touted all the time that talks about self-control. But the reality is, that test only really worked when the young people, both trusted the adults, when they weren't hungry, etc. There are a lot of things that throws that test off that supposedly represents self-control. 
 
And every emotion that you just mentioned, affect the way that we handle decisions and the way that we interact with this world. Good sleep, good eating, exercise, to decrease stress as much as possible, all move us toward doing better with our attention and better with our interaction with other people.

Episode 3, Part 1 Closing 

That's the end of part one of our interview will Dr. Jeff Hutchinson. We’ll post Part 2 in about 2 weeks. Thanks for listening.