 “The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire, not things we fear.” - Brian Tracy There are many things that can keep you from being able to focus and concentrate on the matter at hand. These include, but are not limited to:
Distractions External distractions happen anywhere and everywhere, and everyone is prone to them. It can be anything from too much noise around you to the temperature being uncomfortable; too hot or too cold. It may sound silly, but physical discomfort has an impact on our ability to concentrate. Students often find that noisy neighbors in their dormitories make it very difficult to focus on their school work. That all night party down the hall makes it almost impossible to think, let alone concentrate. Sometimes, something as simple as the incessant ringing of a telephone is enough to send you running for some quiet hideaway. If noise makes you want to run away and hide, it’s time to find some quiet and solitude in order to study. If the dormitory is too noisy, try some study time in the school library. If you’re pulling an all-nighter and the library is not an option, you may have to resort to ear plugs for the silence you crave. External distractions can be uncomfortable settings or inadequate lighting. It’s necessary to have conducive surroundings such as comfortable chairs, tables of the correct height for working, and good lighting. If you’re trying to study in an uncomfortable setting, with poor lighting, you’re more apt to develop back pain and eye strain, rather than concentrating on your studies. So, let’s say you’ve found the perfect setting for your studies. It’s quiet and peaceful with no outside noises, the lighting is perfect, the seating is comfortable, and you’re ready to begin studying. What other distractions could possibly keep you from focusing and concentrating on what’s important to you? That’s when the internal distractions raise their ugly little heads. You may decide that you’re hungry or tired. Or maybe you lack the motivation to stay with it; you’re bored to tears with the subject, or worse, it’s a subject you really have absolutely no interest in to begin with. You could find yourself doing nothing but daydreaming, or feeling totally disorganized. Maybe you’re thinking, “I really should be cleaning up around here; this place is a mess.” Your job could be on your mind too; maybe you’re worrying you’ll lose your position and not be able to pay your bills. Worrying about what others are thinking is a common distraction too. “What if I can’t do this? What if I make mistakes? What if I’m too nervous?” All these things may be running through your head, totally distracting you from the important job of concentrating and focusing all your energy on the task. Worse still, you may develop the nasty habit of negative thinking. That little voice in your head that tells you there’s no chance of success. Whatever gave you the idea that you could accomplish something of this magnitude? You begin to dwell on your every little mistake, instead of looking forward and learning to correct those mistakes. Internal and external distractions are an inevitable part of life and it becomes a matter of how you’ll handle these annoyances and more importantly, how to stop them. Sometimes, it’s as easy as that. You just tell yourself to stop right there and get a grip. Force yourself to stop thinking the negative thoughts and get back to the important task at hand. This takes practice of course, but is essential for concentration. If you don’t grab your attention immediately, you’ll find yourself caught up in the ‘mental leapfrog’ once again, your thoughts going round and round and your focus is out the window. Learning to refocus your attention may take some time, but it is well worth the effort. Stress and Anxiety In today’s world, stress and anxiety are also inevitable concentration breakers. It happens to everyone, at one point or another; and learning how to handle it can make or break your concentration. Short-term stress such as a deadline often helps a person to really knuckle down to a task. You know you have a certain amount of time to accomplish something and focusing is both necessary and desirable in order to do so. When you reach that deadline, you can relax a while before the next one. Long-term stress however, does not aid the concentration effort. The more stress you feel, the less able you are able to concentrate. When you become stressed, your body begins dumping chemicals into your brain to help you focus, and adrenaline into your bloodstream to keep you moving. In the beginning, this can be a good thing. It can keep you going when you need to solve a problem in the here and now. However, long-term stress starts to lessen your ability to concentrate. The brain has fired all the neurons it can, but it cannot continue to replenish the chemicals it requires long term. The problem is the more stress you’re feeling, the more the need to concentrate to relieve the causes of the stress. It’s a merciless self-defeating cycle and can become damaging both mentally and physically in the long run. What can you do to avoid this self-defeating cycle? Instead of saying over and over, “ I have to finish this right now, concentrate!” tell yourself it’s time for a little break. Take a walk, watch some television, take a nap, read something, or exercise. It’s important at this stage to clear your mind, get a fresh perspective on things. If you’re at work and can’t take advantage of these stress relievers, try something simple, right there at your desk. Push yourself away from the work, get up and stretch, take some deep breaths, close your eyes and do some relaxation exercises, anything to take your mind from the problem, even for just a few minutes. Illness and Personal Disaster You can’t avoid these distractions forever. Everyone has to deal with illness and/or personal disaster at one point or another in their life. Simple illnesses that last only a few days make it very difficult to focus on what’s important. Serious illness can actually put everything else on hold for an indefinite amount of time. Focusing on studies or work while experiencing a migraine is one thing, but trying to focus while dealing with a life-threatening illness is something else again. Small or large personal disasters can also make the aim of concentrating on what’s important extremely difficult. A breakup of your relationship can have dire consequences when it comes to being able to focus and concentrate at work or at school. Likewise, a death in the family, marriage, a new baby, changing jobs or locations all can have an impact on your ability to focus on whatever is important in your life at that moment. Procrastination R. D. Clyde said, “It’s amazing how long it takes to complete something we’re not working on.” Unfortunately, this happens to us all. We intend to complete a project, but end up putting it off until tomorrow, or next week, or next month - anything to avoid doing it now. There are many reasons why we procrastinate. Sometimes it’s because we don’t have a distinct goal in mind. If you don’t know what you’re aiming for, how will you know when you’ve hit it? If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you’ve arrived? You might be procrastinating over a project because you don’t really enjoy it, or fear you’re not up to it and you won’t do a good job, so you just keep putting it off. This of course, makes it very difficult to concentrate on the project. We’ve already talked about how trying to force yourself to concentrate results in even less focus than ever. Therefore, you find yourself in a vicious cycle. Procrastination prohibits concentration, which produces guilt, causing you to avoid the problem some more. And there you are, procrastinating yet again. Many times, procrastination is merely resentment against doing something you don’t really want to do. You know you have to do it and eventually you will do it, but in the meantime, you keep pushing it away. But it won’t go away and it will just keep pushing back until you sit down and finish the task. It’s time for you to get down to the priorities and figure out exactly what you want. Set the goals, set up the plan to accomplish those goals, figure out the steps to achieve what you’ve set up for yourself, and then just go for it. Procrastination is usually the result of not enough planning. Get your plan firmly in your mind and procrastination will fade away. Along the way, give yourself some motivation to keep going. Picture yourself at the end of the job, it’s finished and you’re proud of yourself. Give yourself a little reward when you do complete the project. The reward could be anything from a day off to read, or a short trip, depending on the size and length of the project. If you’ve been working on something for months, give yourself a nice weekend of rest and relaxation. Been working hard all week? Give yourself a fancy coffee and an hour all to yourself. Are you procrastinating because the project is so big, so overwhelming, that you can’t even think about it without wanting to run away or faint? Instead of avoiding the problem, and watching it grow larger and larger, try breaking the job into smaller, more easily accomplished chunks. Then do just one section at a time, keeping your mind on that one section and not thinking about the rest until you finish the part you’re doing now. As you accomplish each section, pat yourself on the back, give yourself a little reward, and then get started on the next section, the next chunk of the project. Another reason many people procrastinate is the desire to be perfect. Maybe you don’t want to start a job if you can’t do it perfectly, so you put it off, and put if off, until there’s no more time. Now you’re off the hook. You could have done a perfect job, but there was simply not enough time. It’s okay to be imperfect; we all are. We are, after all, only human, and that’s okay. Don’t push yourself to be something or do something that’s not possible. Information Overload For decades, we’ve been all about developing more and more labor saving devices, communication devices, needing more and more information about everything under the sun. Now we’ve become a society that doesn’t just enjoy, but desperately needs the Blackberry, the pager, the cell phone, the laptop and internet access. Through these devices, we receive information every minute, every hour, every day. We have snail mail, email, radio, television, and phone calls demanding our constant attention. We have books, magazines, reports, and articles that must be read and absorbed. Heaven forbid any information should elude us. We feel we must know everything there is to know, every minute of every day. We’re terrified of being out of the loop, or in the dark about anything. In our quest to know increasingly and because of our fear of being left out from new information, we have come to a point where it is impossible to concentrate on a project, to focus with laser-like energy. We’re much too busy gathering information. When do we have enough? David Shenk calls this “data smog” and likens it to pollution we find throughout our world. The production and distribution of information in today’s world has become so much easier to do, not to mention the retrieval of said information, thanks to the internet. This unfortunately, produces an overabundance of low quality information coming at you constantly, every day, from a diverse amount of sources. The speed at which our society changes is mind boggling to say the least. Technology changes with each passing minute; there’s always new new ways to make old jobs easier or even obsolete. Scientific breakthroughs and cultural innovations happen with such rapidity that it’s difficult to keep up. Every day, science fiction becomes science fact. And all of us feel we must run to keep up, keep our skills sharp, learn new skills every day, every year, constantly adapt to an ever changing society and work world. When the distribution of more information began, it was considered a good thing, but we may have already reached our saturation point, and the flow of information towards us continues, increasing every day. It’s time to limit our use of so much useless information. Futurologist Alvin Toffler has put together a very detailed study of the acceleration of change and its psychological effects. He foresees a time of severe physical and mental disturbances, which he calls “future shock” syndrome. He likens this to the nervous breakdown people experience due to wartime trauma, called “shell shock.” The rapid changes of our modern life can, and he thinks will, produce a state of helplessness and inadequacy. Studies have been done to show the direct correlation between constant change and physical illness. People with high life changes are more likely to develop serious illnesses. Change can bring about one of two conditions. A person can become excited and curious about what happens next, or they can become fearful, confused, and tense. The longer these feelings remain, the more likely that fatigue will set in and the person will experience loss of control and feel highly distressed. Anyone who has experienced these feelings will tell you focus and concentration are out the window at this point. It’s impossible to concentrate under these conditions. Too long in this kind of stressful situation brings about the instinctive animal reaction—fight or flight. A person can become aggressive in his/her behavior, something that is difficult to sustain for long periods, or it can cause that person to want to run away and avoid the whole painful thing. It can also tip a person into total despair and depression, a complete numbing of their sensations, an inability to move forward. Unfortunately, anxiety seems to be ever present in our society, as evidenced by the record use of drugs to suppress the symptoms, such as sleeplessness, irritability, constant worry, and digestive upsets. Never have so many people needed so much medication just to make it through their lives. Maybe it’s time to quiet the incessant chatter and stem the flow of useless information. Then we may better determine what’s important to us and what isn’t, what we need and what we can do without, what’s necessary to our existence and what amounts to pollution of our mental world. What can we do about this “data smog?” How do we clear our heads so as to focus on the problems and concentrate on solutions? For starters, set the filters on your email, to dump the truly useless junk mail. If you must check your email all day, at least limit the amount you must go through. Throw away the obvious junk mail you receive each day unless it pertains to something you really need. Try turning off the television a few hours a day; take a break from the news on occasion. Leave your Blackberry, pager, and cell phone at home when you take a vacation. Let your mind and body rest. Focus on what’s important. Remember, you cannot examine every piece of data, or every new web site added to the millions out there already. Don’t let information take control of you; you must control information. |
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