Okay, so I was going to research something online, noticed I had a Facebook notification, clicked on it, responded to it… then, 8 minutes later, I forgot what I was doing. It took me a couple minutes of retracing my steps to recover it. I call it BBS… Busy Brain Syndrome.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- Is Busy Brain Syndrome Bad?
- Causes of Busy Brain Syndrome
- 50 Years Ago and Today
- The Information Era – Age of Information Pollution
- Five Quick Tips for BBS
- The Benefits of Busy Brain
Been There, Done That?
That’s never happened to you, right? ?
The “can’t remember what I was going to do… or say”, dilemma can happen multiple times over the next hour and sometimes minutes, if I let it. Fortunately, I now use a time tracker to track my time, and often refer to it to quickly recall the last task, or my entire day, such as when I’m posting the day’s review in my journal.
However, I’m not concerned. Miffed sometimes, yes. Concerned, no. I know that my forgetfulness is not because of heredity or any deleterious aging. It shows up in people of all ages, including youth. I don’t need a scientific study to verify this having both lived as one and lived with them!
The forgetfulness of this era is often just BBS – Busy Brain Syndrome.
~LeAura Alderson, cofounder-iCreateDaily.com®
Is Busy Brain Syndrome Bad?
Though I’ve been using this busy brain syndrome (BBS) phrase for a few years, I think this is the first time I’ve written about it. In researching that term to see if others were using it, it seems that indeed they are![1]http://www.sylviamarina.com/_blog/Articles/post/Busy_Brain_Syndrome/[2]https://www.creatingyourplan.com/busy-brain-syndrome/[3]http://busybrainsyndrome.com/
While there are many causes for concern related to forgetfulness, if your forgetfulness is the result of busy brain syndrome, BBS, then it’s not so much to worry about. In fact, an active brain—like active muscles—can keep you healthier and more mentally resilient as you age.[4]https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/199503/the-busy-brain[5]https://deemagclinic.com/2021/07/06/aging/amp/
However, there are things you can do to improve your mental efficiency, especially if this presents a problem. If you’re retired and enjoy flitting here and there throughout your day, that’s awesome, you’ve earned it! However, if you’re in pursuit of a creative career, you’ll want to harness your meandering into a more focused effort.
Goals Make a Difference
Setting monthly goals that you work and tweak daily and weekly makes a huge difference in whether you achieve your desires. So does focus. Begin by asking where you want to be at day’s end, then expand to where you want to be by week’s end. Then set your daily goals accordingly and tweak as you go to refine and stay on track.
“Information overload is a symptom of our desire to not focus on what’s important. It is a choice.”
~Brian Solis, analyst, author, blogger, futurist, visionary, b.2/8/1970
Busy Brain Syndrome Is Not a Disease
BBS is definitely not convenient, and can be annoying and even embarrassing, such as when it happens in mid conversation, or to me on the iCreateDaily podcast. However, the good news is that it’s most often not due to some deleterious aging effect. The reasons and causes will vary by each individual scenario.
If you’re suffering forgetfulness and have concerns, then you should definitely look into it. You don’t want to congest your mind with worry and anxiety. If you’re forgetful, but don’t have any history or lifestyle proclivity toward Alzheimer’s or other dementia in your family, perhaps you just have BBS.
What Causes Busy Brain Syndrome (BBS)
BBS is most often due to these non-disease related causes:
- ADD/ADHD – you can learn how to put it to work for you rather than derail you.
- Creators – living in the flow of creativity impulse
- Ideators – Idea proliferation
- Lack of focus – bypassing deep thinking
- Distractions – Skimming the surface of this and that
- Multitasking – doing multiple things at once or trying to
- Worry – distracted worrisome thoughts/problems that keep you stuck in a negative loop
If you’re an artist entrepreneur, then you’re very familiar with the multitude of tasks, opportunities and avenues available for growing your brand and your business, especially in the online world. If you struggle each day to laser in on what you most need to be doing, then you’re not alone.
A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.
~Herbert A. Simon, economist, psychologist, author, 1916-2001
50 Years Ago and Today
What kinds of things demanded our attention (or that of our elders), 50 years ago? There were no online distractions, very few TV programs, no cell phones or cable with hundreds of channels. Social media 50 years ago was church, the movies, cookouts at friend’s homes, community pool parties and sitting on the front porch chatting with neighbors strolling by.
Today, to research sources to cite for this article, I go to one article that has to be clicked 50 times to get through each page of brief actual content I’m looking for. However, the entire lower 2/3 of the page is clickbait content that makes you want to click to “know the scoop”. Each ONE page has 20 more possibilities to click on, and each one of those leads to another 20 or so.
And that doesn’t even touch the email inbox and social notifications that pop up at each site you visit. If you go to one of your social sites today, there can be numerous notifications and another 50 or so friends posts and ads in your timeline. More distractions added to your own busy creator’s brain.
“There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist, lecturer, philosopher, poet, 1803-1882
The Information Era – AKA – Age of Information Pollution
Distractions are not your fault… but they are your responsibility.
The proliferation of junk food that line the many aisles and shelves of grocery stores today isn’t your fault either. But if you choose to consume that over healthier foods from the produce department, your body will ail and fail. Just as we come to realize that we can eat whatever we want whenever we want it and maintain a healthy body, it’s the same for our creative endeavors.
Distractions are a part of the age that we live in. Just like pollution went with the territory of the early years of the industrial age, so too does attention pollution go with the territory of the information age of today.
We grow up and learn to discipline ourselves to focus on our goals and avoid the rest. We create more than consume, and what we consume most feeds our aspirations and goals.
Our busy brain is put to work for us by focusing it on what we want to accomplish. It’s all just energy, now we’re directing the flow of that energy.
Like Luke, we are yielding The Force… or learning to.
The information age is the age of distractions. Be possessive of your attention… or someone else will.
~LeAura Alderson, cofounder-iCreateDaily®
