Lord777
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Several years ago, I began to notice something in my behavior that caused me some inconvenience. Namely, from waking up to the end of the day, my life was a series of screens.
I started the day with the first thing that woke me up - the phone. And so I lay in bed, watched various culinary videos on Instagram and traveled between different applications.
I went to cook, and my attention switched to the tablet, then I sat down to work at the laptop, and I was distracted by the notifications on the clock. But one thing was really mean thing - my phone, I could spend a lot of hours on it every day.
So I set out to get rid of my phone for a month and, as an experiment, leave a maximum of 30 minutes a day to use it to open Google Maps or call my mom.
And I began to observe. It took about a week to get used to the new, lower level of stimulation. And suddenly a few unusual things appeared in life.
First, the level of attention increased, I became able to concentrate. Of course, not without effort, but much easier than before the experiment.
In addition to this, if before my mind wandered, even with a small number of thoughts, then after a week more and more clear ideas and plans concerning the future began to appear in my head.
Getting rid of one device gave me these significant effects.
How to focus in a world where everyone is distracting you
I have reviewed hundreds of research papers from start to finish, have flown all over the world, and have interacted with experts who study concentration.
I did a lot of experiments on myself and realized that I had accumulated 25 thousand words from research notes. Understood how modern technology affects our attention and our ability to focus.
I want to start with the scope of attention
The scope of attention is how we pay attention (we apologize for the tautology) to the world around us and how much we are able to control focus.
The exploration of this area is exciting. It turns out that when we are working at a computer and are sometimes distracted by the phone, the time to focus on one thing is 40 seconds.
And if the messenger is still open, the bar drops to 35 seconds.
After reading the study, it becomes clear that the reason is far from obvious. We think our brain is distracted. But after studying all the materials, I recognized this as only a symptom of a deeper problem.
The main reason is outside distraction.
It's not that we're distracted, but that the brain is overstimulated. We crave distractions. First of all, our brains love these tiny bits of information from social networks and mail. And these are exactly the things that we do during the day.
Our mind has a mechanism called novelty anticipation, by which our mind rewards us with a release of dopamine. One of those wonderful chemicals we get when we eat a whole pizza or make love.
We get the same stimulation when we visit Facebook. The hormone dopamine travels through our brains, and so we not only crave distraction, but also receive rewards - for looking for and finding a way to be distracted.
We are in a hyperstimulated state, jumping from one object of attention to another. It is very stimulating to the brain.
This is the state of our brain activity today.
If the phone affects my attention span so much, what if I lowered my brain stimulation level even more?
This feeling, which we experience when we go from a state of high stimulation to a state of lower, has a name - boredom. It's the anxiety we get after a super busy week, lying on the couch on a Sunday afternoon and wondering what to do.
I decided to challenge myself
I asked the readers of my site to name the most boring activities that you can think of. I forced myself to do this for an hour a day for a month. To be honest, I am still moving away from some of these things.
Curiously, I noticed the same effects as with the abandonment of the smartphone. It took about a week for my mind to adjust to the newer, lower level of stimulation.
Research shows that it takes our brains about eight days to calm down and rest. For example, when we are on vacation, this is the amount of time we need to completely switch.
During this time, my focus expanded, although I was not surrounded by fewer distractions. But I could focus more easily because my brain was less stimulated and not looking for something to distract myself with.
The idea of plans captured me more, since my mind could wander much more often. There is a great quote:
The same thought is true for our focus and attention.
If you remember when the best and brightest ideas came to you, you will be amazed that during these moments you were rarely focused on something. This could be a shower or a walk with the dog. Think about it, when else did your ideas come together?
They wouldn't do this if they were focused on something else - the phone. This is a special mode of operation of our brain when we consciously allow our mind to wander. This is called defocus mode.
Research shows that it helps the brain to come up with ideas and plan, since we are not focused on anything.
It turns out that when we give attention to rest, it goes into three states: past, present and future. 12% of our time we think about the past and often recall our past ideas.
A much more productive place for mental wanderings is the present. We think about him 28% of the time. For example, you are typing a letter and you cannot express something correctly, because it is a delicate matter. You walk into another room, and suddenly a solution dawns on you. Because the mind had the opportunity to consider the current problem from different angles.
But here's the thing, our brain thinks about the future even more, as much as 48% of its time, which is why we plan our day in the shower, even if it has not yet begun. This is the bias of our mind. It occurs when the mind is not focused.
The remaining 2% of the time, brain activity is dull, the head is empty or there are no ideas in it. But whichever of these three states you are in - it allows your mind to wander.
I like to do something that is not typical of my age and gender. I love to knit, this is one of my favorite hobbies. It helps to calm down and relieve nervous tension. When I knit and my tablet is not with me, a lot of ideas arise in my head!
For you, such relaxation may be something else: taking a bath or a walk in the park. You can nourish not only the body, but also the ideas. You can take a break and just go outside - it's very easy. It will motivate you to realize the idea wandering in your head and awaken your creativity.
It can be as simple as queuing up or getting a massage. Do whatever you like. And here's a little life hack for you: take a notebook with you and record your thoughts.
We need to make fundamental changes
1. What do we mean by attention.
We often hear that we need to work as much as possible and keep up with it. That you have to be super-entrepreneurial.
I am very lazy, but nevertheless there are so many ideas in my head that I can talk and write about. We don't have to try to do more, we do enough. We do a lot, in reality so much that our thoughts no longer wander.
This is sad. After all, it is in this state of the brain that the best ideas and plans come to us. The mind needs more free space.
The car on the freeway is allowed to move forward not only by speed, but also by free space.
2. Stop seeing distraction as the enemy of our focus.
This is not true. This is a symptom of how difficult it is for us to concentrate. And the fact is that the brain is overstimulated by various things.
Two week challenge
I have a two week challenge for you to reduce your brain stimulation level. As a result, you will understand what happened to your attention.
How many ideas began to visit you, what changes in your focus, how many plans will you be able to implement?
For two weeks, try to reduce the amount of stimulation given to the brain by various things. There are so many great features on your devices that can reduce the time we spend on them.
Use them to not only understand where you are spending your time, but also to understand how you can spend it in less.
Try to completely disconnect yourself from the Internet and digital devices in the evening.
Enter the ritual for yourself. There is a ritual of separation. Every evening I completely disconnect from the Internet from 8:00 pm to 8:00 am. This way you can disconnect from the digital world and reconnect with physical reality.
You will have to look at your boredom differently. Just lie on the couch for a few minutes and notice what is happening to your mind. And in this state, you will discover amazingly fruitful things for yourself.
If there is one thing that I found after diving so deeply into the world of focusing, it is that the state of attention determines the state of life.
If we are distracted at every moment, these moments of distraction and overstimulation will accumulate and accumulate, and life will become more distracted and depressed, as if we do not have a clear direction.
But when we become less stimulated, when we relax our minds, then we gain the advantage of greater productivity and a clear focus on creative ideas. This is what makes life better.
Thank you for attention.
I started the day with the first thing that woke me up - the phone. And so I lay in bed, watched various culinary videos on Instagram and traveled between different applications.
I went to cook, and my attention switched to the tablet, then I sat down to work at the laptop, and I was distracted by the notifications on the clock. But one thing was really mean thing - my phone, I could spend a lot of hours on it every day.
So I set out to get rid of my phone for a month and, as an experiment, leave a maximum of 30 minutes a day to use it to open Google Maps or call my mom.
And I began to observe. It took about a week to get used to the new, lower level of stimulation. And suddenly a few unusual things appeared in life.
First, the level of attention increased, I became able to concentrate. Of course, not without effort, but much easier than before the experiment.
In addition to this, if before my mind wandered, even with a small number of thoughts, then after a week more and more clear ideas and plans concerning the future began to appear in my head.
Getting rid of one device gave me these significant effects.
How to focus in a world where everyone is distracting you
I have reviewed hundreds of research papers from start to finish, have flown all over the world, and have interacted with experts who study concentration.
I did a lot of experiments on myself and realized that I had accumulated 25 thousand words from research notes. Understood how modern technology affects our attention and our ability to focus.
I want to start with the scope of attention
The scope of attention is how we pay attention (we apologize for the tautology) to the world around us and how much we are able to control focus.
The exploration of this area is exciting. It turns out that when we are working at a computer and are sometimes distracted by the phone, the time to focus on one thing is 40 seconds.
And if the messenger is still open, the bar drops to 35 seconds.
After reading the study, it becomes clear that the reason is far from obvious. We think our brain is distracted. But after studying all the materials, I recognized this as only a symptom of a deeper problem.
The main reason is outside distraction.
It's not that we're distracted, but that the brain is overstimulated. We crave distractions. First of all, our brains love these tiny bits of information from social networks and mail. And these are exactly the things that we do during the day.
Our mind has a mechanism called novelty anticipation, by which our mind rewards us with a release of dopamine. One of those wonderful chemicals we get when we eat a whole pizza or make love.
We get the same stimulation when we visit Facebook. The hormone dopamine travels through our brains, and so we not only crave distraction, but also receive rewards - for looking for and finding a way to be distracted.
We are in a hyperstimulated state, jumping from one object of attention to another. It is very stimulating to the brain.
This is the state of our brain activity today.
If the phone affects my attention span so much, what if I lowered my brain stimulation level even more?
This feeling, which we experience when we go from a state of high stimulation to a state of lower, has a name - boredom. It's the anxiety we get after a super busy week, lying on the couch on a Sunday afternoon and wondering what to do.
I decided to challenge myself
I asked the readers of my site to name the most boring activities that you can think of. I forced myself to do this for an hour a day for a month. To be honest, I am still moving away from some of these things.
- On the first day, for an hour, I read the terms of the iTunes user agreement.
- On the fourth day, I waited on the line at the Air Canada baggage claim.
- On day 19, I calculated the square root of the first 10 thousand numbers.
- On day 24, I watched the clock.
- And 27 other similar events this month.
Curiously, I noticed the same effects as with the abandonment of the smartphone. It took about a week for my mind to adjust to the newer, lower level of stimulation.
Research shows that it takes our brains about eight days to calm down and rest. For example, when we are on vacation, this is the amount of time we need to completely switch.
During this time, my focus expanded, although I was not surrounded by fewer distractions. But I could focus more easily because my brain was less stimulated and not looking for something to distract myself with.
The idea of plans captured me more, since my mind could wander much more often. There is a great quote:
The same thought is true for our focus and attention.
If you remember when the best and brightest ideas came to you, you will be amazed that during these moments you were rarely focused on something. This could be a shower or a walk with the dog. Think about it, when else did your ideas come together?
They wouldn't do this if they were focused on something else - the phone. This is a special mode of operation of our brain when we consciously allow our mind to wander. This is called defocus mode.
Research shows that it helps the brain to come up with ideas and plan, since we are not focused on anything.
It turns out that when we give attention to rest, it goes into three states: past, present and future. 12% of our time we think about the past and often recall our past ideas.
A much more productive place for mental wanderings is the present. We think about him 28% of the time. For example, you are typing a letter and you cannot express something correctly, because it is a delicate matter. You walk into another room, and suddenly a solution dawns on you. Because the mind had the opportunity to consider the current problem from different angles.
But here's the thing, our brain thinks about the future even more, as much as 48% of its time, which is why we plan our day in the shower, even if it has not yet begun. This is the bias of our mind. It occurs when the mind is not focused.
The remaining 2% of the time, brain activity is dull, the head is empty or there are no ideas in it. But whichever of these three states you are in - it allows your mind to wander.
I like to do something that is not typical of my age and gender. I love to knit, this is one of my favorite hobbies. It helps to calm down and relieve nervous tension. When I knit and my tablet is not with me, a lot of ideas arise in my head!
For you, such relaxation may be something else: taking a bath or a walk in the park. You can nourish not only the body, but also the ideas. You can take a break and just go outside - it's very easy. It will motivate you to realize the idea wandering in your head and awaken your creativity.
It can be as simple as queuing up or getting a massage. Do whatever you like. And here's a little life hack for you: take a notebook with you and record your thoughts.
We need to make fundamental changes
1. What do we mean by attention.
We often hear that we need to work as much as possible and keep up with it. That you have to be super-entrepreneurial.
I am very lazy, but nevertheless there are so many ideas in my head that I can talk and write about. We don't have to try to do more, we do enough. We do a lot, in reality so much that our thoughts no longer wander.
This is sad. After all, it is in this state of the brain that the best ideas and plans come to us. The mind needs more free space.
The car on the freeway is allowed to move forward not only by speed, but also by free space.
2. Stop seeing distraction as the enemy of our focus.
This is not true. This is a symptom of how difficult it is for us to concentrate. And the fact is that the brain is overstimulated by various things.
Two week challenge
I have a two week challenge for you to reduce your brain stimulation level. As a result, you will understand what happened to your attention.
How many ideas began to visit you, what changes in your focus, how many plans will you be able to implement?
For two weeks, try to reduce the amount of stimulation given to the brain by various things. There are so many great features on your devices that can reduce the time we spend on them.
Use them to not only understand where you are spending your time, but also to understand how you can spend it in less.
Try to completely disconnect yourself from the Internet and digital devices in the evening.
Enter the ritual for yourself. There is a ritual of separation. Every evening I completely disconnect from the Internet from 8:00 pm to 8:00 am. This way you can disconnect from the digital world and reconnect with physical reality.
You will have to look at your boredom differently. Just lie on the couch for a few minutes and notice what is happening to your mind. And in this state, you will discover amazingly fruitful things for yourself.
If there is one thing that I found after diving so deeply into the world of focusing, it is that the state of attention determines the state of life.
If we are distracted at every moment, these moments of distraction and overstimulation will accumulate and accumulate, and life will become more distracted and depressed, as if we do not have a clear direction.
But when we become less stimulated, when we relax our minds, then we gain the advantage of greater productivity and a clear focus on creative ideas. This is what makes life better.
Thank you for attention.
