Talking to a friend yesterday brought an interesting discovery to light. I was mentioning how I can sit in front of a book and literally read it out loud, but be thinking of something else entirely.

For example, I can read my study guide for this IT class, and be wondering why I hate my job so much more than everyone else. Not just posing questions, but actually thinking about it. But if I sit down with the intent of thinking about something, I end up doing something else.

So I decided to experiment, and keep my mind busy with one thing while trying to do the more important thing. The first was flossing my teeth while studying; which proved to be ineffective.

Second - Tapping a repetative beat with my feet while reading...nope, I focus more on the beat than my reading. Its really strange, I tend to focus on whatever is "easier" to focus on.

Anyway, Just rambling

Hmmm if I think about the secondary stimuli then I will screw it up but if I do not give it too much thought then it works fine. I am keeping time with my foot while I type this because believe it or not a can spell slightly better this way but there isn't
any one around making sure I keep perfect time and if I worry about it then I will become less successful at concentrating on this post .

The idea of secondary strategies is to do some thing you do not need to engage your fully attention to. My primary reason for listening to music over head phone is drown out Gary's TV and repeative commercials which I found distracting. . . . .tapping my foot was some thing that occurred naturally that I give no thought to unless I mention it in a post or when my foot it gets attacked by a playful kitten{ouch}

I like to listen to music that I find boring whilst doing something that I don't want to do, my mind focuses on being bored with the music while I do the work.