Do we not have more interesting things to hyperfocus on?
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Your mind wanders less often in hyperfocus because you're more engaged.
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"I see hyperfocus as a gift when applied well," Taylor-Klaus says.
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There are downsides to a tendency to hyperfocus on things, too, of course.
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They did so head on, with a dreamlike hyperfocus, for better or worse.
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He implies that the ADHD hyperfocus trait provided a selective advantage in the past.
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Hyperfocus is a common symptom of ADHD, which counterintuitively causes me to be very distracted sometimes.
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Hyperfocus was published in paperback on August 27; the following interview has been edited and condensed.
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So it may not be that hyperfocus is a clinical symptom of ADHD -- and, indeed, hyperfocus is not listed in the DSM-5 -- but it could be a response to having the condition, according to Caye, and it can be channeled into productive or unproductive pursuits.
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Hyperfocus is seen among both of these types -- and yet it's been largely neglected in academic research.
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Senators are growing increasingly alarmed that the hyperfocus on impeachment has killed their legislative agenda heading into 85033.
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Lebowitz: In the book you also talked about how Uber had this hyperfocus on competitiveness at all times.
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My hyperfocus allows me to actually keep my attention on the things that move the needle each day.
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"Hyperfocus" helped me recognize the limits of my attentional space and make my environment more conducive to focus.
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"I think the difference between Twitch and any competition is that degree of hyperfocus on the streamer," Shear said.
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As I read "Hyperfocus," I visualized my attentional space; my thoughts were silver specks inside a walnut-sized circle.
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Hyperfocus is the most productive mode of our mind and scatterfocus is the most creative mode of our mind.
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Hyperfocus is when one task fills our full attention and scatterfocus is when we deliberately let our mind wander.
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The hunter mindset in some ways explains hyperfocus -- once the prey is identified, the hunter intensely focuses on her pursuit.
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But for Yagoda, in particular, that has not been the case, and hyperfocus does not stand out as an impediment.
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But I overlooked how unusual this trait was for a 2-year-old because of my own tendency to hyperfocus.
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The central idea, "that our head is for having ideas, not for holding them," informed much of Bailey's work in Hyperfocus.
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Why my ADHD is a blessingWithout the hyperfocus trait, I'd lack creativity, spontaneity, and a fast-paced lifestyle essential for entrepreneurship.
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One of the few pieces of research on the hyperfocus piece of ADHD is from South Africa, and was the subject of a University of Johannesburg master's thesis by researcher and writer Rony Sklar -- indeed, much of her work has raised the question of why hyperfocus isn't being looked at in the literature, since her own work was limited by sample size.
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ADHD — and my hyperfocus — helped me leave my job on Wall Street to pursue my dream of ripping 1 million people off the couch.
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" Like our mythological Mary, Gordon says, "When individuals with ADHD hyperfocus on one thing, they tend to block out everything else going on around them.
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One day during lunch, I left my phone on my desk at work and went out for a walk, my copy of "Hyperfocus" in tow.
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Chris Bailey is the author of the forthcoming "Hyperfocus: How to Be More Productive in a World of Distraction," from which this essay is adapted.
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Republicans argue the hyperfocus on impeachment has stalled or derailed several of their legislative priorities, including funding bills, defense policy legislation and a drug pricing measure.
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He kept vampire hours as he hacked, coding in a trancelike state that he termed "hyperfocus" until he dropped from exhaustion at around 3 or 4 am.
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But that isn't really the subject of the 2018 book Hyperfocus: How to Manage Your Attention in a World of Distraction, written by productivity expert Chris Bailey.
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Two of the terms you come back to in the book are "hyperfocus," which is directing your attention outward, and "scatterfocus," which is directing your attention inward.
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How scientists explain the link between workaholism and ADHD That's surprising, especially considering the significant impact -- both positive and negative -- hyperfocus can have at work and at home.
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"Hyperfocus, on the other hand, involves over-concentrating on one task to the neglect of others, expending more energy than is needed for a productive result," Gordon explains.
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Mary is just an urban legend—a case example of how people with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder can hyperfocus on a task for hours, losing all awareness of their surroundings.
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It has allowed me to focus on anything, inherently reducing the pull of those topics I find truly compelling—like fiction writing, like art, the things on which I hyperfocus.
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Hyperfocus is not a common topic of conversation among researchers, including Caye and his counterparts at King's College London, but it is among those with ADHD and their therapists and coaches.
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But the general public's hyperfocus on the program is also frustrating; this cut is unlikely to make it into an appropriations bill, as seen when the department tried it last year.
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The latter is what Brandon Ashinoff, a psychologist at the University of Birmingham who studies hyperfocus, has called an "interesting paradox" -- it's too much focus, as opposed to a scattered attention span.
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Hyperfocus is great for engaging in longer tasks which require intense concentration -- but it's not so great if that means that the more mundane tasks, chores, and assignments fall by the wayside.
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She receives regular contact from those in the ADHD community, particularly from coaches and therapists, who say that her conclusions are spot-on as evidenced by working with individuals who experience hyperfocus.
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I have long known that ADD people don't suffer from a lack of attention; when they're interested in something, they can hyperfocus, focusing for longer periods and more intensely than other people.
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Consciously taking on a greater number of complex projects is a powerful way to enter a mental state I call hyperfocus — an attentional mode in which one task consumes your complete attention.
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Sklar echoes this description -- she says that many people with ADHD actually thrive in a more urgent environment where hyperfocus gives the person an advantage in terms of homing in on what's important.
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In an era when success in sports is supposedly all about hyperfocus and specialization, Sellers's approach to long distance running is a throwback, an experiment in whether there might be a better way.
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Social media's hyperfocus on Baraboo as the "Nazi town," as it came to be known, missed a broader point: The salute, or something like it, could have happened almost anywhere in the United States.
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" "The best things about being autistic for me are learning deeply about different subjects through hyperfocus, full immersion in sensory experiences like listening to music or watching a film, and noticing things others may not.
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His latest book, "Hyperfocus: How to Be More Productive in a World of Distractions, " outlines several hacks he uses in his personal life, including a "five sentence rule" that he says cuts his email time in half.
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Many think the party's progressive swing leftward, with a hyperfocus on social issues like contraception and transgender bathrooms, have locked blue collar, working white men out of the conversation, ignored in favor of courting every other kind of voter.
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If Chris Bailey's new book, "Hyperfocus: How to be More Productive in a World of Distraction," is 215 pages long, and I can read 40 pages per hour, how long should it have taken me to read the book?
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The continuing debate in many states over legislation like SB 164 underscores our fraught current cultural relationship to disability: a fear-based hyperfocus on prevention, eradication and tragedy, rather than a human reality that must be accommodated in the present.
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Mr. Bailey splits his book into two sections: one on hyperfocus, which is the state of devoting all your attention to one complex task, and the other on scatterfocus, intentionally allowing your mind to wander in order to connect ideas, plan for the future and recharge.
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But in Sklar's sample, where people were intensely focused -- or in a state of "hyperfocus" -- those with ADHD had higher parietal lobe activation than the non-ADHD group, which "could support the idea of people with ADHD being able to sustain attention depending on the specific context," says Sklar.
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Lawmakers' hyperfocus on Giuliani prompted a decision by Trump's legal team to sideline its most famous member from handling any Ukraine matters as part of the president's defense should Democrats advance a specific article of impeachment addressing the subject, according to a person familiar with the lawyers' strategy.
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The method is to ignore the bulk of scholarship on the impact insurance has on health outcomes in order to hyperfocus an Oregon study which was too underpowered to detect an effect on mortality, but did find that Medicaid populations are financially and psychologically better off than comparable populations who have been denied Medicaid.
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Below, Bailey, along with productivity expert Julie Morgenstern and Boomerang CEO Alex Moore, break down four simple tips that will help you better manage your inbox in 2019: In Bailey's latest book, "Hyperfocus: How to Be More Productive in a World of Distractions, " he outlines several productivity hacks that will help you to effectively maximize your time.
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Why more girls -- and women -- than ever are being diagnosed with ADHD But Arthur Caye, the lead researcher in Brazil's recent study, asserts that hyperfocus may be a result of overcompensating: that is, people who have ADHD may tend to zero in on one particular pursuit as a way to make up for the distractedness in other areas.
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"We made a prudent decision that gives us the opportunity to hyperfocus on D.C." The advertisement, an open letter to Mr. Bezos that was set to appear on a full page in Friday's newspaper, is aimed at combating the notion that the opposition to Amazon was widespread, arguing that a "clear majority" of New Yorkers support the company.
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People with Williams syndrome hyperfocus on the eyes of others in social engagements.
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It is argued that in the hunter-gatherer cultures that preceded farming societies, hunters needed hyperfocus more than gatherers.
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Hyperfocus on a certain subject can cause side-tracking away from assigned or important tasks. Psychiatrically, it is considered to be a symptom of ADHD together with inattention, and it has been proposed as a symptom of other conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Hyperfocus may bear a relationship to the concept of flow. In some circumstances, both flow and hyperfocus can be an aid to achievement, but in other circumstances or situations, the same focus and behavior could be a liability, distracting from the task at hand.
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However, unlike hyperfocus, "flow" is often described in more positive terms, suggesting they are not two sides of the same condition under contrasting circumstance or intellect.
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However, hyperfocus is not always described in a positive light. Some examples include spending "too much" time playing video games or watching television and getting side-tracked and pleasurably absorbed by one aspect of an assignment or task to the detriment of the overall assignment. In some cases, hyperfocus can "capture" a person, perhaps causing them to appear unfocused or to start several projects, but complete few. Other related concepts include trance, hypnosis, hypomania and mindfulness.
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Stitt observes that adults struggling with gender related issues within themselves, often hyperfocus on causal frames in an attempt to explain gender variance, or frames of comparison and distinction, potentially resulting in feelings of isolation and alienation.
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Hyperfocus may in some cases also be symptomatic of a psychiatric condition. In some cases, it is referred to as perseveration—an inability or impairment in switching tasks or activities ("set-shifting"),Priory psychiatric glossary or desisting from mental or physical response repetition (gestures, words, thoughts) despite absence or cessation of a stimulus.Dictionary.com definition It is distinguished from stereotypy (a highly repetitive idiosyncratic behaviour). Conditions associated with hyperfocus or perseveration include neurodevelopmental disorders, particularly those considered to be on the autism spectrum and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
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Chris Bailey (born 1989)P. Claire Dodson, "These Four Common Mistakes Are Making You Less Productive At Work," Fast Company, January 8, 2016. is a Canadian writer and productivity consultant, and the author of The Productivity Project (2016) and Hyperfocus (2018).
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Bailey's second book, Hyperfocus, was published by Viking Press on August 28, 2018. For the book, he conducted a yearlong research experiment to determine how people can be as productive as possible each day, in a world filled with nonstop technology distractions. The book offers advice on maintaining and controlling focus, determining priorities, and minimizing interruptions in order to increase productivity. It is split into two sections: the first on hyperfocus, or being productive by devoting all your attention to completing a task; and the second on scatterfocus, where you allow your mind to wander, which supports creativity and can help to recharge.
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The ADHD symptom of hyperfocus may cause affected individuals to overuse video games, social media, or online chatting, however; the correlation between hyperfocus and problematic social media use is weak. A 2016 technical report by Chassiakos, Radesky, and Christakis identified benefits and concerns in adolescent mental health regarding digital media use. It showed that the manner of social media use was the key factor, rather than the amount of time engaged. A decline in well-being and life-satisfaction was found in older adolescents who passively consumed social media, but these were not apparent in those who were more actively engaged.
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Over many years, most humans adapted to farming cultures, but Hartmann speculates that people with ADHD retained some of the older hunter characteristics. A key component of the hypothesis is that the proposed "hyperfocus" aspect of ADHD is a gift or benefit under appropriate circumstances. The hypothesis also explains the distractibility factor in ADHD individuals and their short attention span for subject matter that does not interest the individual which they are forced to waste their life on (which may or may not trigger hyperfocus), along with various other characteristics such as apathy towards social norms, bad/lazy parental oversight, poor planning and organizing ability, distorted sense of time, impatience, attraction to variety or novelty or excitement, and impulsiveness.
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Wanrong also received visits from her friends and family members from time to time. She enjoyed photography, reading mystery novels, playing the piano, and writing in English. According to some historians, Puyi and Wanrong did not consummate their marriage and they remained childless. Wanrong most likely had ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) which manifested itself as both Hyperfocus and OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder).
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In ADHD, it may be a coping mechanism or a symptom of emotional self-regulation. So called "twice exceptional" people, with high intellect and learning disabilities, may have either or both of hyperfocus and perseverative behaviours. They are often mimicked by similar conditions involving executive dysfunction or emotional dysregulation, and lack of diagnosis and treatment may lead to further co-morbidity.
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Additionally, there is an association with other mental disorders and substance misuse. Although it causes impairment, particularly in modern society, many people with ADHD can have sustained attention for tasks they find interesting or rewarding (known as hyperfocus). Despite being the most commonly studied and diagnosed mental disorder in children and adolescents, the precise cause or causes are unknown in the majority of cases. Genetic factors are estimated to make up about 75% of the risk.
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Puciato was relieved to have finally identified it because, until then, he did not understand several of his personal traits such as hyperfocus and a deficiency in short-term memory when performing music- related activities, as well as a distortion in time perception. He has dealt with panic attacks, agoraphobia, depression and other mental health issues as well. In an extensive 2018 interview with Kerrang!, Puciato opened up about his inner struggles with the intention of helping people who are going through similar situations.
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Hunter-gatherers' that was identified in Hartman's theory. From an evolutionary viewpoint, "hyperfocus" was advantageous, conferring superb hunting skills and a prompt response to predators. Also, hominins have been hunter gatherers throughout 90% of human history from the beginning, before evolutionary changes, fire-making, and countless breakthroughs in stone-age societies. Humans devised better innovations and organizational structures to boost their living, and the need for hyperactivity slowly diminished over a long period of time regardless of whether they were in a gathering or farming society.
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The hunter vs. farmer hypothesis proposes that the high frequency of ADHD in contemporary settings "represents otherwise normal behavioral strategies that become maladaptive in such evolutionarily novel environments as the formal school classroom." One example such as migration in the hunter-gatherer society, is that some of these hunter-gatherers that naturally predisposed to these various amounts of this same gene may have value in certain kinds or qualities of social groups. It was also stated that the lack of 'hyperfocus' should not be the only dichotomy of 'Farmers vs.
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Neurodiversity advocates point out that neurodiverse people often have exceptional abilities alongside their weaknesses. For example, a person with ADHD may hyperfocus on some tasks while struggling to focus on others, or an autistic person may have exceptional memory or even savant skills. In light of these facts, advocates argue for recognition of strengths as well as weaknesses in neurodiverse people, and that a variety of neurological conditions that are currently classified as disorders are better regarded as differences. This view is especially popular within the autism rights movement.
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Though absent-mindedness is a frequent occurrence, there has been little progress made on what the direct causes of absent-mindedness are. However, it tends to co-occur with ill health, preoccupation, and distraction. Three potential causes: # a low level of attention ("blanking" or "zoning out") # intense attention to a single object of focus (hyperfocus) that makes a person oblivious to events around him or her; # unwarranted distraction of attention from the object of focus by irrelevant thoughts or environmental events. Absent-mindedness is also noticed as a common characteristic of personalities with schizoid personality disorder.
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K. H. Ko further states that decreased need for 'hyperfocus' was building the conditions for human language. Genetic variants conferring susceptibility to ADHD are very frequent—implying that the trait had provided selective advantage in the past. Glickman & Dodd (1998) found that adults with self-reported ADHD scored higher than normal adults on self-reported ability to hyper-focus on "urgent tasks", such as last-minute projects or preparations. Adults in the ADHD group were uniquely able to postpone eating, sleeping and other personal needs and stay absorbed in the "urgent task" for an extended time.
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Wenn Lawson's further work on the theory formed the basis of his PhD, Single Attention and Associated Cognition in Autism, and book The Passionate Mind. A tendency to focus attention tightly has a number of psychological implications. While monotropism tends to cause people to miss things outside their attention tunnel, within it their focused attention can lend itself to intense experiences, deep thinking and flow states. However, this hyperfocus makes it harder to redirect attention, including starting and stopping tasks, leading to what is often described as executive dysfunction in autism, and stereotypies or perseveration where a person's attention is repeatedly pulled back to the same thing.
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Absent-mindedness is where a person shows inattentive or forgetful behavior. It can have three different causes: # a low level of attention ("blanking" or "zoning out") # intense attention to a single object of focus (hyperfocus) that makes a person oblivious to events around him or her; # unwarranted distraction of attention from the object of focus by irrelevant thoughts or environmental events. Absent-mindedness is a mental condition in which the subject experiences low levels of attention and frequent distraction. Absent- mindedness is not a diagnosed condition but rather a state people experience in their daily lives from a variety of different causes including boredom, sleepiness, or focus on internal thoughts instead of external surroundings.
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Concentrating on a task - one aspect of flow In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one's sense of time. Named by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in 1975, the concept has been widely referred to across a variety of fields (and is particularly well recognized in occupational therapy), though the concept has been claimed to have existed for thousands of years under other names. The flow state shares many characteristics with hyperfocus.
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A major criticism of data driven instruction is that it focuses too much on test scores, and that not enough attention is given to the results of classroom assessments. Data driven instruction should serve as a “road map through assessment” that helps “teachers plan instruction to meet students’ needs, leading to better achievement”. Summative assessments should not be used to inform the day-to- day teaching and learning that is supported by data-driven instruction. Additional problems associated with perceptions of data driven instruction include the limitations of quantitative data to represent student learning, not considering the social and emotional needs or the context of the data when making instructional decisions, and a hyperfocus on the core areas of literacy and mathematics while ignoring the encore, traditionally high-interest areas such as the arts and humanities.
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