It works. I use this during my workday when I'm working on highly complex things that have multi inter-dependent relations. It becomes fatiguing. A quick scroll through Lemmy is more refreshing than just sitting there

the first time I’ve heard anyone say low attention span piecemeal content does anything but rot your brain.

Well, that's the neat thing, you didn't...

I'm talking about deliberately practicing cognitive flexibility which literally combats that...

That’s… a completely different thing?

100% spot on here.

If I said Wayne Gretzky was as well known as Michael Jordan, you'd also be correct in pointing out they were two separate people.

And if I said Bo Jackson is as popular as Bo Jackson...

I shouldn't be surprised if someone asked me why I compared the same thing to itself, but apparently some people would take it in stride.

Cognitive flexibility is jumping between unrelated tasks

Research on CF training is still in its infancy; yet, emerging research proposes that training CF may be effective in improving cognitive skills. Conditions that engage skills at the core of CF may facilitate improvement, that is, introducing variability in training protocols, uncertainty, and switching between task-relevant dimensions and across tasks. Furthermore, skills related to creativity that engage novel and divergent thinking (e.g. generation, remote association) may support CF.

The evidence for far-transfer effects following CF training is currently scarce but promising. Initial studies suggest notable improvements in task switching with transfer effects on different areas of executive functioning 46, 47. Friedman and Miyake [48] have demonstrated through confirmatory factor analysis the potential impact of CF in real-world settings. Further studies suggest beneficial effects of CF training on academic abilities (i.e. language, performance in math tests, sentence comprehension in standardized reading tasks in children 49, 50, 51). Training programs that target the diverse cognitive processes involved in CF may have stronger potential to show benefits that generalize to real-world settings.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352154624000640

But we're kind of blurring the lines between long term practice and short term relief.

But even tho the brain isn't a muscle, it's still a metabolic system. Like, if you're running a 5k you may run/jog, that's a standard way to rest while still moving because if you stand still, it's harder to jump back to running.

To get into what I was originally talking about...

Id have to start explaining metabolic processes inside a brain and all the different parts of memory.

Like, I think it might help more to think of highway hypnosis, the problem is if you focus on one thing, your brain wants to offload that workload. So occasionally you need to make your brain focus on something else for a few minutes at a rest stop, then when it goes back to driving it stops trying to offload it

It's not enough to "pause" the activity the brain wants to offload, because taking a break is normal and the brain still is lazy and will just keep trying to offload it when you start work again.

To fight that, you need to trick your brain into thinking it's an unpredictable environment and your conscious mind still needs to focus on the task at hand.

That's what CF is about, training your concousnmind to stay tuned in longer, be ause it thinks that at any moment you may thru something completely unrelated at it.