Attention Residue

Notes

Claim

Attention residue means that unfinished ideas tend to linger in our minds, even if we have switched to a different task. The mental capacity is switched from the Executive Attention Network to the Default Mode Network.

Explanation

This is usually the reason why Multitasking is sequential task switching with cognitive switching costs, because even though we switched tasks, the previous task tends to linger in our mind, taking valuable resources and limiting our ability to be productive and finish the task at hand.

Why it matters

The less spare resources we have, the more likely we are to experience Burnout is chronic exhaustion from overwhelming demands and Stress can be adaptive or harmful depending on perception and context.

Examples

Supporters

Some claim that it can be used for our benefit. Deliberately leaving creative tasks unfinished, like stopping to write at the middle instead of the end of a chapter, or creating an unfinished draft will increase Ideation generates ideas through exploratory thinking freed from constraints through our downtime brain.

Opposers

Open questions

Visual

Overview

🔼Topic:: Working Memory and Cognitive Limits ↩️Origin:: 🔗Link::