It's My Brain's Fault

I may have figured out why I cannot, for the life of me, stay awake in meetings and training sessions: There are no Attention Triggers.

I've made this up, but it makes perfect sense to me, so you can't disagree even if you disagree.

Here's my theory: Our minds, as we grow up, become conditioned to pay attention to certain triggers -- someone calling our name, a raised voice, the mention of subjects we're interested in. As a musician, my ears perked up at the mention of "trombones" or "brass," and tuned out when other sections were being spoken to. Parents learn to pick out their children's cries. Without being fully conscious of it, we probably know when the commericials are done and we need to get from the kitchen to the living room to watch more of our favorite show, or we can tell when a family member has pulled into the driveway.

The meetings at work have a complete lack of Attention Triggers for me. They don't discuss things that I'm interested in, or even fully understand, and they're usually explained in a drone by people who are perfectly nice and perfectly knowledgeable but not exactly on their way to winning Entertainer of the Year. I try to pay attention, but every ounce of gray matter floating inside my skull is convinced that there are at least a dozen other things worth thinking about, so it does that instead. OK, there is one small part that cares about being good, but the rest of my brain seems to believe that, to quote Dark Helmet, "Good is dumb."