Published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Original title: Disengage from screens to solve problems
As an academic dean, I spend a lot of time in the summer talking to new college students. My colleagues and I encourage students to try new things and get out of their “comfort zones.”
This advice has been passed down to generations of college students and it’s still useful. In fact, it turns out that being able to tolerate discomfort is a key to growth and there is science to back this up.
When I suggest that students should get out of their comfort zones, I mean more than just joining a club, trying intramural sports, or taking a class in a subject that is new to them. What I really want them to do is to let themselves get frustrated by the things they are trying to learn and to allow that learning and development to happen.
In my own experience, it took me a long time to see this in action. I spent my 40s working full-time while earning a doctorate in education. There were many times that I thought about quitting the program because I felt stuck.
I’d get frustrated with something I was trying to do and think to myself, “Why am I doing this! I don’t need to finish this degree. I keep struggling with this concept and how it fits with my work. I don’t want to do this anymore!”
Then I’d talk to my adviser or a trusted mentor about quitting and they would encourage me to give it a little more time and sit with the discomfort of not knowing the answer. What would often happen next was that the pieces of the puzzle would come together when I wasn’t thinking about them or anything else.
It was in moments like taking a walk or doing the dishes — when my mind was quiet — that the answers would come. I finally realized that the frustration and discomfort were necessary as my brain worked away on the solution in spite of my more active efforts.
Not long ago, I happened upon a TED talk that addressed these very issues. In it, Manoush Zomorodi talked about the ways that boredom gives the mind space to make connections among various ideas and concepts.
This kind of activity helps us plan for the future, solve problems and spark creativity. When we multitask or are on our smartphones or just staying “busy,” we don’t allow our brains the space to do these higher-level functions.
It seems to me that students, and people in general, are less willing to be uncomfortable. They spend more time interacting with their gadgets as a way to stave off boredom and loneliness. I, too, am guilty of this. In spare moments I end up playing Words with Friends or checking Twitter and Facebook.
This constant need to interact with something interferes with our brains’ natural processes. Similarly, our kids spend much more time in scheduled activities and have less unstructured time than those in my generation did. This means they rarely have to experience boredom.
I see this firsthand with my kids who don’t know what to do with themselves when they don’t have an activity scheduled. They often end up interacting with some kind of screen — a smartphone, iPad or the TV.
I’m pretty sure this is related to a lowered tolerance of frustration, which then results in a struggle to try new things. I know that my kids are not the only ones who hesitate to continue to try a new activity if they find that they are not successful at it right away.
Occasionally, I have this vision of a world reminiscent of the one in the movie “WALL-E,” where all of the people have lost the ability to do things for themselves. They are too fat to walk and they let robots take care of their needs. They’ve unlearned how to be curious and solve their own problems.
I am hopeful that as human beings we won’t lose our ability to persist through difficult times. We have no shortage of big problems that need creative solutions and things are not getting less challenging any time soon.
We have to try to slow down and allow our minds to be less busy so that they can do their business of problem-solving.
