It takes self-discipline to follow through with those larger tasks that return only a delayed sense of gratification, and I think that’s a learned ability. And in that regard, it was probably a good thing that my formative years were spent in a conscientious home environment. But a compelling sense of curiosity combined with an ability to hyper-focus on tasks have also helped me to keep moving forward throughout my life, though perhaps in fits and starts.
Regardless, my attention doesn’t easily span the necessary duration of most forms of passive presentation… TV, movies, theater — or lectures, conferences, and ceremonies. I’m a doer as opposed to a scholar. And in that regard, I’ve always had to employ some strategies to make it through the tedious parts.
During my undergraduate years of college, my favorite study spot wasn’t any of the usual student lounges. Instead, I preferred the game room in the student center, an obnoxiously loud environment. Powered by a small bucket of strong coffee, I would situate myself at a corner table and proceed to concentrate on the memorization of some sequence or system while the external world faded into silence.
The focus usually lasted for about an hour before my surroundings would begin to leak back into awareness, signaling that the neurotransmitters needed a recharge. And that was where the game room came into the picture. Sometimes, whole days would pass like that, oscillating back and forth in heaving waves of intense focus punctuated by utter distraction. It may seem inefficient, but it’s always worked for me.
When I mentioned this to a psychologist friend of mine, she commented that I was describing “ADD,” or Attention Deficit Disorder. And she also remarked that ADD is at least in part genetic, apparently associated with a gene called “DRD4-7R.” Don’t ask me what any of this means, other than that the gene is repeated seven-times. But the gist of our conversation was that it’s a naturally occurring genetic characteristic that probably served our hunter-gatherer ancestors in their quests for food and survival.
DRD4, apparently moderates dopamine, a chemical messenger in the brain important to learning and reward (pleasure). And according to my friend (and some articles if since read), people with the “7R” variant generally need more stimulation to feel dopamine’s pleasurable effect.
Perhaps predictably, studies show that the DRD4-7R gene correlates with risk-taking behaviors, exploration, habituation (becoming quickly bored with things), desire for novelty and adventure, sex, and drugs (and rock-n-roll?). And it’s also closely associated with attention deficits and hyperactivity. People with 7R just need a bit more of a jolt to get the pleasure center firing.
So there it is — perhaps I’m just a natural hunter-gatherer, built for exploring an unknown forest, focused intently upon my prey as it approaches, and then… Except, I’ve never been much for killing things myself, and I usually get my food at one of the local markets. And then there’s that whole “civility” thing demanded by societies in general.
Natural selection evidently long ago resolved that problem for what now amounts to some eighty-percent of the world’s human population, with the “4R” variation of the DRD4 gene. With fewer repeats, DRD4-4R has less of a mediation effect on dopamine, allowing it to be more easily felt. And that’s probably a good thing for the settler who needs to stay in pretty much the same place to tend the farm, or to herd the cattle — or to work in an office, or to write a book.
The advantage of an adaptation is relative to environment, so it would seem there’s something intrinsically well-adjusted about a civilized person being satisfied, and in fact pleased, by the result 
of a place in civilization. It’s like the descendants of some long-extinct species of wolf who lost enough of their instinctive wildness to benefit from a new social opportunity… perhaps first with a group of hunter-gatherers.
But a hunter-gatherer in a settler environment needs a great deal of self-discipline. Most risk-taking behaviors are by definition illegal in civil societies, making it difficult for a hunter-gatherer to get that dopamine feeling without also getting into trouble of some sort or another. Like wolves among humans, settlers don’t have much use for distracted non-conformists. So nowadays the 7R’s have to satisfy their instincts in the wilderness, or listening to loud music, or riding motorcycles…at least in public.
Past that, they’re confined to lurking in the shadows, skirting the poorly lit edges of civilization while their socially better-adapted brothers and sisters rest well-fed and content next to the campfires. Eventually, they’ll wander off — it’s in their genes. But sometimes, hunger calls even the wolf from the forest.
Luminous Aether 
Interesting essay (as always). I like how you used the wolves analogy. Very thoughtful. Given my own experiences with distraction and observations of others, it seems that there are different overt representations in different people, or perhaps it’s a matter of degree for different attributes. In any case, each of us finds our path, even if it seems a little zig-zaggy to others. 🙂
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Thanks, David. “Each of us finds our path…” Very Buddhist. 😉 Seems I’ve done alright on mine, even if it’s sometimes been along the route less traveled. And I think you’re correct that in reality people tend to fall along a spectrum, probably in more-or-less of a bell-curve. Quoting Roger Waters (Pink Floyd), “It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire.” I just tend to wander off occasionally.
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Better to get it at the grocery store—that’s really where they make it anyway.
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I wonder if I could get hold of one of their machines — the ones that make all that stuff?
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I never could do homework in libraries. In both undergrad and grad engineering education there was often a very heavy homework practice load. I usually set up shop with coffee somewhere public. Somehow, complete isolation and quiet does not really help. The first post-doc I did was at a public university that had not invested in infrastructure, but its libraries were fantastic. They were equipped with lounge chairs and sofas and one could lose a complete Friday in one. ?Good for assimilation, but not for idea generation or problem solving —- those seemed linked to some chaos, some social stimulation, and some chemical stimulation.
I’m starting to take account of the number of reptiles living in association with my household. The number of lizards would probably be uncomfortable for some. The eastern fence lizards on the back porch accept the presence of people within inches and don’t appear to have any need to wander. Yet they can scramble with amazing speed. I reckon some ideas have been worked out about reptilian reaction times. But that will wait for Friday.
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I get it. Likewise with the homework and studying. The process of memorization seems to require some attachment to at least intermittent stimulation. But I’ll note that expression can be just the opposite; I’ll sometimes be surprised at the amount of time that has passed while engaged in a creative/constructive activity. My husband not long ago commented to me that he was surprised that I had remained intensely focused on one particular task for an entire day.
Not many reptiles here… mostly just little garter snakes around the creeks. But there’s still way too much snow on the ground for anything cold-blooded, though I occasionally hear frogs when it warms a bit. I’ve been traveling down the hill to run in the desert of late. Not yet a rattlesnake hazard, but I watch where I step.
Just curious… How’d you end up way back here?
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You posted a link in Teammates.
Memorization is a different thing. I don’t think I could do that very well until about age 22 or 25 even. Then somehow, I figured it out. Organic and biochem really were just language efforts to me. I probably would have liked learning languages better at that later age than as an adolescent.
I suppose most folks can get completely focused from time to time. My Dad did so regularly to the point of becoming a bit farcical.
Poison ivy is the greatest bother in my fallen tree cleanup. I have been interested in learning out the daily/weekly/seasonal range of rattlers, but that probably depends upon habitat.
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I thought I recalled looking for this recently. I had just forgotten why. Hmmm…
When I was young… around ten-years, I did some memory experiments on myself. It just seemed to me that if I simply committed my attention to a moment, that I could imprint it permanently into my memory. A subsequent spontaneous sequence of physical movements and the accompanying visual images have been fixed into my memory ever since.
I know that memories aren’t necessarily created all at once, and that they can also be the result of reinforcements by replay. I wonder if kick-starting a memory with an immediate replay helps to get them fixed? I know that remembering lectures required intensive note-taking… though I only rarely ever re-read my own notes for anything other than specifics. What was important was the processing of auditory stimulus into written language. I could also easily remember long sequences of numbers… irrationals to many places, phone and ID numbers (all still there even today), or the visual patterns of numerical processes… when I was younger. The latter process worked in the same way as learning kanji-characters, which I find easier to remember than their pronunciations. I’m definitely visual and kinesthetic.
I think that if I’d somehow stuck with music or foreign-language when I was young, my brain would work very differently now. Or maybe not.
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Misremembering is as interesting sometimes.
I had a disgruntled PChem prof in junior year undergrad. He had lost a son in Vietnam. We had to memorize the physical constants frontispiece in the text (Atkins). In the present day, R = 8.31445(98) J/K·mol; back then it was 8.31441 J/K·mol. This cost me a bit of brain rearrangement in the last couple of years since I recently had reason to care. And, amazingly, there are so many more people who care more than I do.
Arithmetic was a game for me to do when left alone in the years before kindergarten, but memorization of larger things did not click for me until much older.
I can play some guitar tunes that I learned early on. It is a peculiar struggle..I can play partially through it and then get stuck sometimes. But if you keep at it, sometimes they come back fully. Then one is tempted to play them three or four times, but I can let go.
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Oh, I misremember all kinds of things. Really irritates my husband.
I have Avogadro at 6.02214199×10^23 mol^−1, and Boltzmann at 1.3806503×10^−23J/K (which puts my version of R at 8.314472 J/K·mol). Just looked them up… 6.022140857(74)×10^23 mol^−1, and 1.380 648 52(79)×10^−23J/K respectively, which works out to your present-day number. Hmm… guess that qualifies as “misremembered”.
I’ve wondered a bit about the changes in SI units coming up.
Aside from memorizing all of the constants on the little card included with my college calculator, I have a bunch of old eV equivalent values of various degrees of accuracy forever stuck in my head… I think 1.60217733×10^-19 Joules is off, 241.768 terahertz (1.24μm@c), 11604.525 kelvin, 3.67493×10^-2 Hartree, 1.07354466×10^-9 Dalton… Just convenient at the time to some numbers I’d periodically have to ballpark on the fly. Nowadays, it would be fine if they just evaporated away… although they’d probably take my original California drivers’ license and ancient REI membership numbers with them.
It’s a lot harder anymore. Makes me wish I’d absorbed more music and music-theory… and maybe a foreign language (other than French) when I was still young.
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