Have we lost our cognitive patience?Do we leave behind this precious ability to understand and face our reality in a calm but profound way?According to several neuroscientists, the answer is “yes”.
This idea is increasingly present, especially if we think about how we handle most of the information that comes to us from social networks: quickly and without verification.
- The term cognitive patience was recently coined by Maryanne Wolf.
- A cognitive neuroscientist and psycholinguist of brain development at the University of California.
- In his book.
- “Reader.
- Go home?” (free translation.
- Reader.
- Go home).
- Explains something impressive that happened to him a long time ago.
Most current readers can’t read for an hour without checking their mobile phone multiple times. We have become impatient and have lost, more or less surprisingly, part of our ability to concentrate. In addition, Stephen King recently spoke of a growing phenomenon: audiobooks.
This format, composed of an easy and accessible resource, allows us to dedicate ourselves to our tasks while a pleasant voice reads us a book, so the effort is minimal. Cognitive patience in these cases has nothing to do with our ability to expect or postpone a reward, but defines the ability to calmly process information, a reality, an event.
It’s this skill with which you can make sense of things after you’ve deepened them, it also means having the ability to control to regulate interference, focus on a goal without haste, without pressure and know how to use this forgotten muscle. that draws attention to our advantage.
Let’s look at more information about that
Skimming is an increasingly frequent phenomenon, it refers to the speed reading strategy, in which you only stop at the beginning and end of a text or information, we keep the most superficial parts of what awaits us, be it a book, an article, an instruction manual.
The opposite of skimming is scanning, that is, careful analysis of each data, these American terms reflect very well a practice already observed in a part of the population, which has already lost (or is losing) an essential skill. : cognitive patience.
If we look at the world in a hurry, we do not understand its secrets, if we are in a hurry to get quick information from anywhere in our environment, we can end up with a half-truth. In addition, if we do not use our analytical, critical and thoughtful skills, we will end up assuming false information or letting out the most relevant nuances of our reality.
That is why we have to understand that losing cognitive patience makes us much more vulnerable to demagoguery, so in a world obsessed with haste and orchestrated by information transmitted in seconds, we have a very clear obligation: to be careful, demanding and meticulous.
We live in a society that doesn’t value patience. Important people who have power, for example, don’t wait, don’t line up. On the other hand, from a young time they teach us this classic idea that if we want something, we have to go for it. It is true that determination is important, but it is even more important to learn to be patient, to understand that success and wisdom take time.
This dimension is, in turn, the wisest answer we can give to the daily challenges of life, for only if we are patient and learn to treat the world without haste and attention, we allow ourselves to appreciate its magical details, its greatness. and also their truths.
We will train our attention and the pleasure of calm. Remember that patience is, after all, a concentrated force directed towards a goal.