Distraction!

“Distraction is a kind of attraction”

Distraction a term which is in vague these days, has sought the attention of the people. Distraction literally refers to a thing that distracts someone’s attention. The attention is drawn on something which is not needed at that particular moment.  It differs in degree and depends on the object or aspect which has distracted the attention from the main task. Distraction is a common phenomenon, only the reason differs.

What make us to distract our attention from the task which we’re doing??  Some of reasons for why we’re being distracted are as follows:

a)   The aspect or the thing that distracts our attention will be “stronger” and “attractive” then the main task.
b)   Sometimes we’re prone to distract or shift our attention for some genuine reason. We may call it as a break or an entertainment.
c)    Our “interest” and “dedication” towards the main task could be less.
d)   Biologically it has been proved that an individual can attend to any task for maximum of only a few seconds.
e)   Attention is distracted when an irrelevant task interferes with the task one is doing.
f)    We are distracted by the thing which we “like” the most from the main task.

Distraction from a main task would result in two extremes. Firstly due to the distraction a person’s efficiency towards the task may reduce. Secondly, if an individual is aware of being distracted he/she would put “more” effort on the task to improve their efficiency. So it depends on the person how he uses the distraction as.

Now-a-days the term distraction is common in the students’ forum. If something goes wrong we’ve a habit of blaming on the thing which has distracted our attention, which is not correct! It seems like students are being pampered by the parents. I mean if parents gets to know that their daughter/son is being distracted by a particular thing, then they’ll stop giving that thing to him/her.  This is good if a child crosses the limit. Here the parents are teaching us to “avoid” the distraction but not teaching how to “confront” it. At this age they can help us to avoid the distraction but in the later stages of life there could be some unknown distraction which we alone should manage. To confront that we ought to have “courage” and that courage only comes with the experience. So we should know how to confront or live with the distraction rather than avoiding it. It’s a learning process and opportunity should be given for the students to learn. We just have to know our limits.