Dancing With Your Books

The Mindful Way of Studying

Jake J. Gibbs, Jake W. Gibbs, and Roddy O. Gibbs

© 2012 John J. Gibbs, James W. Gibbs, and Roddy O. Gibbs

This document may not be copied or reproduced in any way without the expressed permission of the authors

Cover: From Temptation of St. Anthony – Flight and Failure of St. Anthony, c1500, Hieronymus Bosch

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In loving memory of Mary Ellen "Fuzzy" Hanrahan. An exquisite tomato with a fine set of gams.

Acknowledgements

This book could not have been produced without the help of Dr. Kate Hanrahan, wife, sister-in-law, and mother. Kate’s content and copy editing of the book, technical assistance, and flair for turning a phrase improved the manuscript immensely. Her ideas and constructive criticism were essential. She handled our frequent grouchiness and doubt with aplomb. In addition, Kate was seldom bitchy, which we know took tremendous self-restraint, and she was consistently loving and supportive. In your honor Kate, “…we’d like to sing you a thousand verses of ragtime.” We have no doubt that the Grateful Dead wrote these lyrics with you in mind, despite the fact they publically claimed they wrote them for us.

Naya Hakim, a doctoral student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, was unflagging in her review of parts of the manuscript in several editions. We are grateful to Naya for her fine work.

Thanks to the delightful and gorgeous Sarah Gibbs, and to her companions, Lily and Jeb. All were sources of comfort and amusement throughout the writing of this book.

Finally, we’d like to thank the enchanting Anita Courtney and the Lambs, Delia and Laney Gibbs, for lovingly providing external control for Jake W. Gibbs. They are currently writing a book on their experience, The Care and Feeding of the Karass Hoople : A Memoir.

Introduction

Read Me! Please

Hello Kind Reader, Many of you will find the messages contained between the covers of this book counter to much of what you’ve learned to think and do about learning. Here are some points to consider:

Dancing with Your Books: A Summary

Taking the Pain Out of School Work: The study sessions and school projects you take on don’t have to be new experiences in misery. In the right state of mind and with the right strategies, learning and schoolwork can bring satisfaction (or at least a lot less pain).

Change in Attitude: The mindful approach to schoolwork is simply a change in attitude toward what you are doing. It’s easy to understand. It is, however, a demanding practice.

Fighting With Your Books (FWB): Most of us see schoolwork as a fight with our books. Common images students use to describe how they study include phrases like “hit the books,” “conquer material,” “smoke it,” “nail it,” “own it,” “kick butt,” “grind,” “cram,” and “ground and pound.” We are in conflict with the material and come to see our books as adversaries. Winning is everything. Our objective in battle is to subdue, crush, and/or dominate our books. Our mission when studying is to triumph over the material we were assigned to learn.

Dancing With Your Books (DWB): Getting something from your books does not require vein-popping effort to give them a good thrashing. Dancing With Your Books (DWB) is a far better way to do schoolwork than Fighting With Your Books (FWB). In DWB, you and your books are cooperatively engaged in a mutual enterprise. Two become one in the act of dancing. There is no separation between you and dancing. In the present, you are dancing and dancing is you. Staying in integrated movement requires a focus on step after step.

To Get to Your Goal, Focus on Means or Right Effort: What is called Right Effort in the mindful approach is the most effective and efficient strategy for achieving goals (e.g., grades, status, degrees, money, job offers, and so on). The method is to set your goals then allow your attention to settle on the means to reach your goals (e.g., studying, taking notes, listening in class, reading assignments, and so on). It is an approach that allows your mind to pay attention to the activity of the present rather than the results In other words, the best way to attain a desirable end is to pay attention to the means to get there. The essence of Right Effort is that to get from X to Y, let your mind’s eye focus on X.

Inefficiency in the Distribution of Attention: If we focus all our attention on goals, there isn’t any left for means or the work to be done to reach the goals. Even if we split our attention between what we want and how to get it, only half our effort is placed on what steps we have to take to reach our goals.

Mindfulness: Mindfulness is the practice of fully embracing the present moment. It entails gently allowing your mind to return to what you are doing when you notice that your attention has strayed elsewhere. Hard pushing or frantic pulling is not required to get the mind back in the present moment. Mindfulness and Right Effort share a common core in their concern with the Now or present moment. Right Effort can be considered the application of mindfulness to specific activities, projects, or tasks. Mindfulness and Right Effort can often be used interchangeably.

Anyone Can Learn to be Mindful: We all have the potential to pay attention or be mindful in school, but very few of us have been shown how.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Rewards: The practice of mindfulness and the application of Right Effort bring two kinds of rewards or satisfaction. One is intrinsic satisfaction. It’s the enjoyment you get from what you’re doing. It’s the reward inherent in doing what’s needed in the present to accomplish your goal, which is in the future. The second kind of reward is extrinsic. It’s what you get for accomplishing your goal.

Maximizing Intrinsic and Extrinsic Satisfaction: The best way to maximize both intrinsic and extrinsic satisfaction is to do things with mindfulness, Right Effort, or complete attention to the present. In other words, focusing your attention on what you are doing in pursuit of a goal is the best means to get pleasure from the doing itself and reaching the end to attain satisfaction for accomplishing your goal. Attention to what you are doing in the present brings intrinsic satisfaction. It also enhances your task performance. Doing a better job increases your chances of reaching your goal, which results in extrinsic satisfaction.

Essence of Meditation: Meditation is a basic practice to develop mindfulness. It is essentially the practice of Right Effort in a sitting position on a cushion, bench, or chair. The idea is to simply sit with Right Effort or mindfulness then try to apply it to all that you do in your day, especially schoolwork. The more you practice Right Effort the better you’ll get at it. But be very patient.

Steps in Meditation: Meditation involves (1) sitting and breathing; (2) noting when your mind has wandered; (3) simply observing without analysis or judgment that your mind has strayed; (4) just letting be whatever thoughts and emotions emerge; (5) gently allowing the return of your mind to quiet sitting and breathing; and (6) beginning again, and again, and again…when your mind drifts from your breath in the present moment.

Scientific Support for the Benefits of Meditation: Scientific research primarily by neuroscientists and psychologists provides evidence that mindfulness meditation has a positive influence on learning in school, mental health, physical health, brain functioning, sports, job satisfaction, and many other areas and activities.

Intellectual Understanding is not Enough: Mindfulness is easy to understand intellectually but difficult to consistently put into operation in your life. It takes commitment, patience, and practice.

Two Rules: The two primary rules to learning mindfulness, full attention, or Right Effort are (1) begin, and (2) continue.

Avoid Self-judgment: Don’t try to measure your progress. Be kind to yourself. Develop self-compassion. When you think about your practice of mindfulness, it may seem that you aren’t getting anywhere. Just keep going without thinking about it. The effects are often subtle and cumulative. Just assume they are occurring. Don’t dwell on them. There are not failures in meditation. Every meditation session is perfect as it is.

PART ONE

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF PAYING ATTENTION - WHY IT SHOULD MATTER TO YOU AND HOW TO DO IT

1.1 The Los Angeles Lakers and the Dalai Lama

What do members of the LA Lakers and the Dalai Lama have in common, besides, of course, name recognition and spiffy outfits?

Both the Dalai Lama and players on the Lakers have extraordinary powers of attention or concentration, and they’ve enhanced their ability to pay attention through the practice of meditation to develop mindfulness. Everyone knows that the Dalai Lama practices meditation, but even most ardent basketball fans are surprised to find out that Phil Jackson, the coach who led the Chicago Bulls and the LA Lakers to a combined 11 NBA championships, hired a mindfulness meditation coach for the Bulls and the Lakers. Coach Jackson has practiced meditation for many years, and mindfulness or full attention is an essential component of his coaching style and strategy. He has even written a book on his personal journey and his unique approach to coaching - Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior.

As you’ll see, the mindful approach to paying attention can be applied to many areas, including studying and schoolwork, and we think it’s better approach than what most of us use. The development of mindfulness or full attention through meditation has been around for a long time, and its effectiveness has been supported by recent scientific studies.

The central message of this book is that the most effective and efficient strategy for achieving goals (e.g., grades, status, degrees, money, job offers, and so on) is to set your goals; forget about them; and allow your attention to settle on what you are doing or should be doing in the present moment to reach your goals (e.g., studying, taking notes, listening in class, reading assignments, and so on). In other words, the best way to attain a desirable end is to pay attention to the means to get there.

The strategy for staying in the moment is that when disruptive thoughts and/or emotions draw you away from what you’re doing in the present, let them be without trying to push them away or make them stay, and gently let your mind return to what you are doing in the present.

This approach represents a far-reaching change in what most of us think is the best way to get where we want to go. The departure from the conventional Western view of devoting more attention to what we get for doing something (ends or goals) in relation to what we do to attain our goals (means or process) is a radical shift in how we see the world, and it can have a profound impact on our satisfaction, efficiency, and effectiveness.

These themes are repeated throughout the book, and they are presented in a variety of different contexts. There are three reasons for this repetition: (1) it highlights the importance of the central topics of the book, i.e., mindfulness and Right Effort; (2) it demonstrates the versatility in the application of mindfulness to many different activities; and (3) it present mindfulness and Right Effort in a number of contexts, which may resonate with different people.

A second central message is reading about how to pay attention is not enough. You can read this book a thousand times and it won’t help you in your life. Reading just promotes intellectual understanding. You need practical understanding. You want to apply what you read in your daily life.

Let’s consider an example. Say you want to learn how to ride a bike. You read dozens of manuals on bike riding; you attended lectures by experts on how to ride a bike; and you watch videos of kids happily sailing down the street on their bikes. If you carefully pay attention, this provides you with an idea of how to ride a bike. However, intellectual or book knowledge of how to ride a bike is not enough to learn how to ride. To learn how to ride a bike, you have to put your knowledge into practice. You have to get on a bike and ride it down the street. You will experience fear, hesitation, wobbling, and perhaps crashing before you get the balance you need to stay erect on your bike. You’ll have to practice braking, turning, and other skills you’ve read and heard about before you become a competent bike rider. Without putting your intellectual understanding of bike riding into practice, you’ll never experience the joy of riding.

1.2 Now and Zen: The Confused Journey of Jake J. Gibbs, Zen Inept

The experiences presented starting in this section are those of the eldest author, Jake J. Gibbs. For this reason, they are written in the first person.

My personal experiences in learning about the importance and difficulty of paying attention or staying in the present moment has been a long journey that started many years ago. It will continue for the rest of my life.

I’m telling you my story as a way to introduce full attention or mindfulness, but mostly, I want to encourage you to give it a try. If I learned to apply of mindfulness, although admittedly my experience has been uneven, I contend anyone can learn to be more mindful or to pay attention better. You just have to keep coming back to it through your ups and downs.

1.3 A Birthday Wish

Many years ago on his birthday, I asked my friend, Marty Zakis, historian, philosopher, and Latvian hand-painted necktie enthusiast, his wish for the future. Marty replied, “Someday, just one (expletive deleted) time, I’d like to be where (expletive deleted) I am.”

At the time, Marty’s statement didn’t make a lot of sense to me. You are always where you are; you can’t be any place else. So why wish for it? Why not wish for a girlfriend or boyfriend you don’t deserve to be on the same planet with, or to inherit a medieval castle in Latvia?

I attributed Marty’s wish to too much birthday cake or something else he ingested at his party. Despite his prodigious brainpower, he was known to become irrational under certain conditions.

Although I discounted Marty’s birthday wish, his words stuck in my mind. I thought about them from time to time, and I gradually came to appreciate his wish. I realized I was never where I was. I was never fully present doing with complete attention whatever I was supposed to be doing. No matter where I was, my mind wasn’t entirely there. Thoughts of other places and other times intruded on the present with maddening regularity. My mind was constantly timesharing in the past, present, and future. My thoughts were always jumping all over the place. I was continually in a state of scattered mind.

Eventually, I wished I had never listened to Marty’s wish. By occasionally observing my state of mind when I was supposedly involved in a task in the present, I realized just how uninvolved I was. When I was in class, I was thinking about what I would do when I got out of class or what I wished I could do. When I started on a trip, I was thinking about arriving at the destination. Even when I was having a great time, the depressing thought that eventually it would end would enter my consciousness. Of course, I was partially aware of the present, but I was never fully involved or fully absorbed in what I was doing in the present moment.

My observations of myself resulted in a deeper appreciation of the present. I reasoned that if the present was the only reality, and my life was important to me, I should try to live more in the present. I also realized that if I lived in the present, I would probably be better at things because my mind and mental energy would not be distributed among three time zones (past, present, and future). I might even enjoy more whatever I was doing at a particular time.

“Power to the present” became my motto. No more zoning out to the past and future. I would mentally superglue myself to the present. I would make myself a present of the present.

1.4 Time Wars

My initial attempt at staying in the present was an aggressive mind-over-time strategy. I resolved to push out the past and the future and capture all mental territory for the present, its rightful owner. No effort was too great.

My strategy backfired. I was outmaneuvered. Troops of thoughts and images from the future and the past invaded the present with overwhelming force. I was decisively defeated.

I was humiliated. I felt foolish for even trying to stop the juggernaut of intrusive past and future thoughts. What hubris on my part. After all, I am but one puny human being.

I returned to my old ways. I once again grew comfortable with the idea of entertaining a variety of thoughts and feelings associated with the past and future while I was acting in the present. It became second nature for me to multitask. I planned my day or reviewed events from the previous day while taking my morning shower. While sitting in class, I developed a rich fantasy life of romance, athletic accomplishments, and athletic romantic activities. I thought mostly about getting out when I was in class. When I sat down to study, my mind was stuck on how long until I was finished.

I came to believe that this was the way things should be. It was a natural state for humans. It was familiar and comfortable. I concluded that my effort to stay only in the present had been misguided. I apologized to my mind for starting a civil war, and I returned to my comfortable old ways. I happily bounced from thought to thought, and I cheerfully endured being tugged this way and that with constantly changing mind states.

I called Marty Zakis to tell him of the foolhardiness of his birthday wish. He didn’t remember making it.

1.5 Frozen in Fear

The idea that it is better to be fully present rather than absent part of the time kept reemerging in my life. It was reinitiated following a scary incident in Newark, NJ, where I was working at the time. I was walking down Washington Street to meet some colleagues for lunch at the Garden Restaurant when a guy approached me and pulled out an enormous knife. From my perspective at the time, it looked like a samurai sword, and the guy wielding it appeared to have bad intentions. He looked extremely menacing to me. My initial reaction was to freeze in terror. This brilliant defensive move was followed by my turn-and-run gambit, a technique I had perfected shortly after entering kindergarten at St. Peter’s School.

A few days after the event when my heart stopped racing, but my mind had not, it occurred to me that if the guy brandishing the huge blade had ever cornered me, I would have no idea of what to do. I fantasized about making several lightening fast moves and disarming my tormentor. I thought of arming myself with a firearm. Of course, the reality was if I possessed a firearm, I would be embarrassed in front of friends, family, students, and colleagues. I had been known on occasion to be an extraordinary windbag who could bloviate for hours on the issue of gun control. Besides, if I had a gun I might shoot somebody, for instance, me.

What I thought was a reasonable solution emerged when I came across an advertisement to study self-defense at a local martial arts school. The words study and art appealed to me. I figured I could learn to fly like the martial artists in the movies typically shown on TV on Saturday afternoons during the late 70’s and early 80’s. I was hoping that I might even be able to acquire the elocutionary technique favored by Kung Fu masters in early martial arts movies where the sounds of words are made several seconds after the movement of the lips. You would have to be insane to accost a man who could speak this way, even if he looked like me.

Unfortunately, I selected a martial arts school that emphasized physical conditioning and sparring over philosophy and esoteric techniques. My teachers didn’t affectionately call me “Grasshopper”, and I didn’t learn the “death touch” or how to catch a bullet in my teeth, as I had hoped. Most of my training consisted of catching roundhouse kicks to the ribs. I also became quite adept at blocking punches with my face.

1.6 Kicked and Punched into the Past

I trained in Goju-ryu karate under the guidance of Sensei Ron Gaeta and Sensei Ken Post, a couple of “Jersey guys” whose idea of a good time was doing dozens of pushups followed by multiple rounds of sparring. When I moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, I trained in judo and Taekwondo with Sensei Larry Driscoll who had a similar approach to my New Jersey instructors. While “studying” the “art,” I became interested in the rich history of the martial arts, and I started reading about it. Not unexpectedly, I found that I was much better at reading about the martial arts than I was at fighting, and it didn’t hurt or scare me nearly as much. Ch’an became a popular practice in China and is still practiced today. The central teaching of Ch’an is that the best way to live life is to pay full attention. By maintaining complete presence with what is going on, we learn that life doesn’t have to be as hard as we make it. The method is simply to devote complete attention to the present and experience what happens.

In China, Japan, Korea, Tibet, Thailand, and all places where Buddhism initially grew roots, there was a mutual influence with the existing culture. Buddhism is a very adaptable approach to life. In ancient cultures, it usually mixed with the prevailing worldviews or culturally prescribed ways of making sense of life.

1.7 Ch’an

I learned from my reading that Bodhidharma, who brought the teachings of Buddha from India to China, developed the martial art of Kung Fu, which influenced the fighting arts of Japan and Korea. Bodhidharma had two purposes in mind in developing a martial art. Both were practical. One was to provide his unarmed monks with some way to defend themselves from highway marauders. The monks did not possess much, but they were easy targets.

The other purpose was to furnish an alternative to sitting meditation as a way of developing mindfulness or the ability to pay attention to the moment. Some monks were having trouble sitting for long hours in a cross-legged position simply paying full attention. The monks would practice fighting movements in prearranged steps with total immersion or attention. It was a form of moving meditation.

Most monks eventually practiced breath meditation in a sitting position as a way of staying in the present. This method was passed on from Buddha more than 2500 years ago, and it is still practiced today. The Buddhism practiced in China became known as Ch’an, which means breath.

Ch’an became a popular practice in China and is still practiced today. The central teaching of Ch’an is that the best way to live life is to pay full attention. By maintaining complete presence with what is going on, we learn that life doesn’t have to be as hard as we make it. The method is simply to devote complete attention to the present and experience what happens.

In China, Japan, Korea, Tibet, Thailand, and all places where Buddhism initially grew roots, there was a mutual influence with the existing culture. Buddhism is a very adaptable approach to life. In ancient cultures, it usually mixed with the prevailing worldviews or culturally prescribed ways of making sense of life.

1.8 Zen

Ch’an spread to Japan, where it thrived. Ch’an, which is pronounced Zen in Japanese, influenced many aspects of Japanese culture. Even today, Zen can be seen in Japanese forms of visual art, poetry, flower arranging, and gardening.

Samurai warriors embraced Zen. Its application to the bow and the sword raised their use to an art. The powers of concentration developed in Zen training were indispensable to the samurai. In battle, a slight lapse in attention meant death. The lesson of Zen that life must be lived in the present one moment at a time was a great aid in dealing with ever-present thoughts of impending death.

For the Japanese warriors, their entire way of life (known as budo, meaning the way of the warrior) was the practice of complete attention to the moment. The way or the path was to be aware of the current situation and completely absorbed in a given activity. Warriors learned from the practice of Zen that the best way to enter battle was to let go of thoughts of self and consideration of eventual victory or defeat. All attention was devoted to the battle as it unfolded. Thoughts of self and outcome would only get in the way of detecting the movement of opponents and reducing reaction time.

As I understand it, samurai warriors had an unusual perspective on their opponents. Adversaries were considered the enemy, of course, but they were also seen as an indispensable part of the way of the warrior. They were to be honored. In battle, your opponent was an integral part of the event. You had to become as familiar with the moves of your opponent as you were with your own. It was a dance of death performed by two highly skilled warriors who were totally absorbed in the performance. There was no independent existence for them. There was no separation. They existed fully engaged in a mutual enterprise. Then in a flash, in one elegant, deadly, sweeping strike, it was over. One of the dance partners met death.

Martial abilities were not the only ones developed by samurai through the study and application of Zen. Miyamoto Musashi, known as the Sword Saint, was among the most famous samurai. In addition to being a warrior, he was a poet, painter, sculptor, and writer. His book, A Book of Five Rings, is still read today.¹

1.9 Moving Beyond Battle

I read many books on the modern unarmed forms of Japanese martial arts, including karate-do, judo, and aikido. The message in all that I read was the same: proper performance requires full attention to the present moment, and practice and discipline are essential.

My reading in the martial arts, in which Zen was often central, led me to read more about Zen. I learned that Zen is primarily considered a way of life to be applied right here and right now. Indeed, Lissen calls Zen the “art of life²I found that in addition to the specific applications of Zen in Japan to rock gardening, art, and the tea ceremony, Zen has been suggested in the contemporary West as an approach to many activities: – psychoanalysis; organizational management; social work; and driving a car. Zen has even been applied to Tango dancing , knitting , and falling in love .³ It seems that the Zen approach can be applied to anything. If Zen is the art of life or paying full attention to what you are doing in the present, shouldn’t it be applicable to everything you do in life? It should certainly be applicable to learning in college.

My interest in Zen Buddhism broadened to other forms of Buddhism and to meditation, contemplation, mindfulness, and consciousness development. I found what I read compelling and useful.

Most of the Western authors I read do not consider Zen or many other forms of Buddhism to be religions. For example, former monk and current Buddhist scholar Stephen Batchelor argues in Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening that there are no beliefs required in Buddhism. The practice of Buddhism can be seen simply as way of life or approach to living that works for many people.⁴ This was Buddha’s original message.

As I continued to read, my interest in full attention or mindfulness and meditation grew. I came to realized that in trying to implement my friend Marty’s birthday wish back in the day, I had used the wrong approach to being fully present. I didn’t know how to pay attention. The way of learning to pay attention through meditation and its application to other areas of life, such as going to college, was very different from what I had used in my life up to that point.

1.10 We All Know How to Pay Attention, Don’t We?

The ability to pay attention has been recognized as important both by ancient masters of various wisdom traditions and modern experts. When it comes to learning anything and getting things done, we doubt if there is anyone who would disagree that attention is essential. Just think of all the times in your life parents, teachers, bosses, coaches, and others have implored you to just pay attention to what you are doing. You would think by now with all the attention paid to paying attention, we would be pretty good at it. But most of us are not. We are easily distracted from what we are doing in school and just about all other settings.

Is it that we just don’t try hard enough to pay attention? Or maybe activities like school just aren’t interesting enough to hold our attention. Perhaps, we never learned a very effective method for paying attention, and our capacity for staying focused has not developed to its full potential.

Ask yourself if anyone has ever taught you how to pay attention. By this we mean a specific technique or set of instructions that you can practice like you would practice a sport, dance, or musical instrument. Can you describe the technique, method, or process you were taught for paying attention?

For many years, we’ve asked friends, students, and family members to respond to these questions. Very few have had anyone teach them a specific method for paying attention or improving their ability to focus on a task or activity. An even smaller number have consistently practiced a method when they have been taught one.

1.11 But Aren’t We Taught to Pay Attention in School?

It’s not that we don’t acquire any ability to pay attention in school. It’s the way we learn to concentrate on schoolwork that is the problem. Obviously, we figure out something about how to pay attention in school or we wouldn’t learn anything. But, as we’ve indicated, the knowledge and practice of paying attention can increase your effectiveness as well as your satisfaction in school.

Without instruction on how to pay attention, students are left to do the best they can. Developing the ability to pay attention effectively requires some guidance.

1.12 Advocates of Attention in Education

Many observers have noted that the focus of Western education is primarily on content or the acquisition of knowledge in specific areas, e.g., history, language, science, and mathematics. The teaching spotlight is seldom shining on how to stay attentive while learning.

We assume that most students figure out effective methods of paying attention by themselves with the encouragement of teachers. This supposition is simply not true in almost all cases. Those rare individuals who have uncommon ability to pay attention deeply possess a priceless skill.

William James, one of the most influential American psychologists and educators, observed more than 100 years ago that a characteristic essential to those who are uncommonly gifted intellectually and creatively is their ability to sustain attention. These individuals have the ability to focus attention for long periods of time and effectively deal with distractions.⁵

More than a century after William James wrote, Dr. B. Allan Wallace pointed out in The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind that each of us has latent creative talents that can be activated by learning to pay attention. Dr. Wallace and others have observed that excellent attention is necessary for the complete development of any ability, talent, or skill.⁶

The ability to learn the content of various disciplines along with their central methods of inquiry presupposes that you can pay attention long enough to learn. But teaching content alone does not help students learn to pay attention very well. Acquiring the ability to fully pay attention requires a method and way to practice it.

Paying attention fosters mindfulness or an awareness of what we are doing. Mindfulness requires presence. When we are mindful, we are conscious of what we are doing and center our attention on the process of doing it in the present moment. If we are inattentive or unaware, we are mindless. As Harvard professor, educator, and psychologist Ellen Langer sees it, much of our approach to learning in school, as well as other endeavors in life, reflects mindlessness rather than mindfulness. This limits our effectiveness, creativity, and satisfaction.⁷

1.13 Fighting for Attention

Although very few of us are taught a specific method for developing our ability to pay attention, most of us do acquire a general approach to paying attention that is conveyed to us during our formative years by parents, teachers, and others.

The first major aspect of paying attention we learn from our prevailing culture is that it is necessary to keep our mind focused on what we’ll get for our effort, i.e., reaching our goal and obtaining our reward. For example, it is assumed that the best approach to studying for an exam is to focus on getting a good grade and other benefits associated with academic success.

The second aspect of paying attention we learn is to use an aggressive strategy to stay focused and keep our minds from wandering from what we are doing.

Common images students use to describe the kind of attention they pay to learn and perform well in school include phrases like “hit the books,” “conquer material,” “mind over matter,” “smoke it,” “nail it,” “own it,” “kick butt,” “grind,” “cram,” “ground and pound,” and “beat the books.” One young woman reported that one of her friends, a male, characterizes effective and vigorous studying as “making that book my bitch.”

1.14 Forced Concentration or Rambo Hits the Books

Many people endorse forced concentration as the preferred method of paying attention. It’s an aggressive stance or a combat, war, or Rambo style.⁸ Paying attention is seen as winning a war against distractions and asserting control over our own unruly minds. We are fighting both our own minds and what we are trying to learn or do.

In the forced concentration or the combat model of attention, focus on everything from hitting a baseball to studying in school is a brain-smoking, mind-knuckling ordeal in which you subdue your foe with a demonstration of superior force. Putting your mind to learning, sports, or anything else is hardly a tender affair from this perspective.

Even if the war model were the best way to go about learning, nobody ever gives us detailed instructions on how to go about it. We are told to “try hard,” “make the effort,” “be aggressive,” “bear down,” “keep in mind what’s at stake,” and so on. However, we are seldom given specific instructions on methods or techniques that lead to paying attention in this way.

Don’t despair. There is an alternative to the war model or fighting with your books. It’s what we call dancing with your books. We guess you’re probably not totally surprised by this given the title of this book.

1.15 Dancing With Your Books

A central objective of this book is to present you with a different way of framing, approaching, or looking at schoolwork or anything else you do. Seeing things differently or exploring a new perspective is often a first step in doing things differently. It is frequently the most important step.

Our own experience in school and those of many students, friends, and family members we know has convinced us that the way we commonly look at learning is ineffective and counterproductive. There have been alternative approaches around for centuries. But most of us ignore them or reject them for the more conventional approach to paying attention, i.e., the combat model.

We have found that there is no need to fight with your books or your mind. They are not something “out there” posing a threat that you must conquer or subdue to achieve your goals.

A more productive and gratifying way to frame your relationship to your books is as dance partners. Dancing with your books certainly brings up a different set of images than “making that book my bitch.”

When you watch accomplished ballroom dancers, for instance, two become one in the act of dancing. There is no separation. They certainly don’t fight with each other. If you faithfully follow the steps presented in this book, you can learn to dance with your books rather than fight with them. Of course, as every dancer knows, attaining proficiency is demanding work that requires motivation, patience, flexibility, persistence, and endurance.

1.16 Getting Out of Your Own Way

Truly learning to dance with your books requires that you develop the ability to focus on the task of learning or the dance itself without constantly shifting your attention to the results of your effort. Thinking about yourself while dancing, including status and other rewards of dancing well, gets in the way or interferes with your performance. It takes your attention away from the activity of dancing. Although it sounds bizarre at first, one of the major problems you face in learning to dance or do anything well is simply getting out of your own way so your attention is on learning. Once you are out of the way, your natural ability and creativity can do the work they are supposed to do unencumbered.

Learning to dance with your books or do anything else right requires that you become less self-centered or results-focused and more task-centered or process-focused.

Great professional dancers become fully absorbed or completely immersed in dancing when they dance. Many dancers, and other performers (e.g., professional athletes), will tell you that they perform best if there is only the performance when they perform. If they start thinking of themselves performing or people reacting to their performance, it interrupts their rhythm and takes them out of the flow. This doesn’t mean that they are unconcerned with performing well or that they don’t desire the benefits of successful performances such as money, recognition, and career advancement. It means the best way to get the rewards that result from dancing well is to pay attention to the dance itself when you are dancing.

An important distinction between dancing and fighting with your books is how you deal with distractions or impediments to paying attention. As you’ll see more clearly as you read on, when dancing with your books, you deal with disruptions and obstacles to paying attention by simply letting them be. When you do this, your attention will refocus naturally on the task at hand. No force or aggression is necessary. You don’t have to bully your mind into focusing on what you are doing.

1.17 The Paradox: Time-Place Dissonance