The Minecraft Method of Finding Your Focus
How to get things done when it feels like the zombies are always encroaching
Even though I’m not really one for video games, I can talk about Minecraft with the confidence of a much more seasoned gamer. I know, for example, that you can play in creative mode, which is all about world-building, or in survival mode, where your main goal is to dodge the monsters and, well, survive.
How do I know this? Because every day my seven-year-old turns on Minecraft in survival mode, my younger son joins in, and then the zombies come. “I want to play in CREATIVE mode,” he yells to his older brother, frantically defending himself against the enemy.
I get it: It’s hard to build when something scary could be lurking around the corner, ready to pounce. My concentration-zapping “zombies” aren’t little digital monsters — but they are constant interruptions, news-induced stress, and garden-variety exhaustion. When stress levels rise, creativity, focus, memory all take a hit. For me, that means that by the time I make it to my kitchen table to write, I often struggle to get a word out.
Research shows that the prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain that thinks creatively, remembers things, and focuses on challenging tasks — goes “off-line” during acute stress…
