FOCUS
If
you focus on unnecessary things, you are steering your ship towards them. What
is focus? Before that, let's see what is meant by lack of attention. There is a
person named John. Focus is the difference between where he wants to give his
attention and where his attention is at the moment. People give their attention
to something at all times of the day. That's not what most of the time
requires. There are many reasons for that. The main reason for that is stress.
When stress increases, we cannot pay attention. We should have space in our
mind to pay attention well. Let me give you a small example to understand this.
Christina Bengtsson has done a ted talk on the art of focus. At the age of 23,
she wants to be the best in the world at something.
She
chooses the shooting range for that. From the moment she chooses that goal, she
spends thousands of hours working on it. Thousands of hours of training. She
eats and spends most of her time training. After that she traveled all over the
country participating in competitions for 03 years. But they don't stand out in
the field and don't get a single award. Christina Bengtsson's biggest question
was why it was so difficult even after so much training. Anyway, with time, she
will participate in the world championship in target shooting. Now it's
Christina's chance. She takes the goal. Christina has one more chance left. The
target distance is 50 meters.
The
size of the target is 10.4 mm. A million thoughts run through her head even as
she prepares to shoot a very delicate target from several meters away. A small
movement can turn this into another failure. All of a sudden, she sees a
beautiful maple leaf falling from a tree, floating in a gentle autumn breeze.
At that moment, Christina gives her full attention to the paper and instantly
becomes very calm. The 2005 world championship title is Christina's. This maple
leaf completely frees her from disturbing thoughts. Let her focus. She wins. Do
you understand how important attention is to our mind? How much stress interferes
with it.
According
to BETTER THAN YESTERDAY channel we have two types of FOCUS. Number 1:
Scattered attention. Number 2: Directly focused attention. What is this
scattered attention? This means you have a scattered focus in this method. It
can be shown here as well. In this way, when you pay attention to something,
you also give some attention to everything around you. This is where the
multi-task character of doing a lot of work at once comes out of you. Either
studying while cooking or thinking about other things while doing one thing.
What happens is that your attention is divided into different things. The
problem with this is that when we switch between two tasks, it is not
instantaneous for the brain. He should immediately load the information related
to the work you are doing. When you switch from one task to another, you force
the brain to continuously load, unload, reload the information related to that
task. In the end, nothing works and the brain gets tired.
Directed
Focus, in this you stop paying attention to everything else and give full
attention to one essential task. This is the method that you should pay more
attention to and this is what the smartest people in the world do the most.
Their focus is like a laser beam, they focus on one task at a time. So if you
want to pay attention properly, you need to minimize the scattered attention as
much as possible. There are several ways to do this.
We need to remove distractions, we don't pay enough attention to our brain because our brain is so powerful that it only focuses on one task at a time. What is the biggest obstacle we have when doing something these days? Our phone. Shade Zahrai talks about performance psychology and presents on the world famous platform called tedx. She says that when we are doing work, we face brain drain by having our phone in a place where we can see it. What is Brain Drain? About the intelligence that the country loses because the people of a country migrate to other countries hoping for a better life. But the concept of Brain Drain that we are talking about here is different. This concept says that even if your phone is on silent mode while you are trying to focus on work, or if it is turned the other way, your ability to focus on your work will be greatly reduced.
As
published in the University of Chicago press jenners, this was found in a
research done in 2017. That means our phone is the only obstacle we have in the
world right now. Simply put, our brain's cognitive capacity is significantly
reduced, our ability to engage in work and attention is significantly reduced
by what is shown on the table without even using the phone. Because we only
need to check what's in the notifications of the nearby phone, which means you
haven't checked the phone yet. But only the need to see the phone takes a lot
of attention. But if you want to use your phone regularly for work, try to turn
off notifications on social media apps or keep sounds off for most of the time
in such a practical way. If not in a way that suits you, there is a very small
chance of losing our attention.
Make
a priority list in your own way. This is a kind of to do list but a little
different. I also did not believe this list before, the day I finished the work
after reminding myself. But the problem is that when we do that, we keep more
responsibility in our heads along with stress. That is the responsibility to
remember the work. If we take that responsibility into a notebook or put a note
on the laptop, if we are not free from that responsibility, reminding ourselves
of what we have to do all the time also causes stress, especially during long
working days. You can either make this priority list or your important work
list every working day.
Or
you can make it only on busy days. You decide that. In this list, you
prioritize the tasks that are most important to you. Make a list of the things
you need to do today in order of importance to achieve your professional and
personal goals. You make this list and give value to each task according to how
important it is to you. But try to enjoy your important work while working on
this important list. While doing them, eat and drink something, take small
breaks, send a text to your loved ones and answer a call from them so that it
does not interfere with work. Work like a human, not a machine.
When
you make a priority list and finish the small tasks quickly, you will be free
to pay attention to the tasks that have a lot of pressure in your head. I think
it is those little things that give us the most stress. It can be to give a
call, it can be to reply to an email, it can be to pay a bill. Sometimes our
brain gives us a fake signal that we have very serious work to do when there is
a lot of work to be done very easily. And that signal can bring us to a place
where we all work together. Make that priority list in your own way. Some days
I make that priority list according to the stress level of that work. The work
that can bring more headache is finished quickly. Take your time and do the
things you can do while drinking a coffee.
So
make your own unique list. If you don't like priority list, make a concept for
it in your own way. It doesn't matter. Finish similar things at the same time,
if you have to take several business calls, finish those calls at once. If you
have to send several emails, send them all at once. If you have to pay a lot of
bills, pay them all at once. It is also a good method that can be used at
times.
If
it is difficult for you to focus, make a not to do list, if you work according
to this while finishing the important work, it will save you a lot of time.
What we do with this not to do list is to remove the things that disturb our
attention for a while. Especially removing obstacles due to social media. When
we keep a note like that, we give a signal to the brain that we should put
these things away for a while. Then he becomes a little more controlled.
Try
to maintain a good level of physical health, we don't get sick willingly, but
if you don't sleep for a significant amount of hours, you won't pay attention.
Studies have found that if we can sleep for 7-9 hours, we can focus better. Do
exercise. Even by walking among the trees in the morning and evening, you get
great support from the good chemicals released by the brain. You should also
drink good water. Cut down on fast food, especially if you have to pay
attention to the big work of the day, if you don't do that, you may get brain
fog. This is not a disease but another name for reducing our ability to think.
Paying
attention is a skill you can train. First, try for 10 minutes to give full
attention to work and remove all obstacles. Then work for a while. For example,
if you have several tasks that you must do within a week, do them at the same
time every day. Make it practical for you.
Make
it a habit, when you go to start work, start on Monday, now it starts at 9:00
and 10, now it starts in the middle of the month and next month. It's not
possible. Did you remember the work? It should start within a few minutes. This
will not happen if the motivation comes and the working vibe is created and the
working feeling comes. Motivation, vibe and feeling are found in between.
Studies have found that many people can pay more attention in the 3 hours after
waking up. Because we have rested for about 7 to 8 hours. It gets easier with
practice. For some people, it can be changed to adapt to their own habits.
Take
a good break, we want to be free for a while without doing anything if
possible. A few years ago, scientists had said that spending one time a week
being lazy is also quite good. But that doesn't mean that you have to spend the
whole time with some device, if that's the case then it's not a rest. Chris
Bailey has made a video called "How to get your brain to focus".
Chris is doing a self-study by using the phone for only 30 minutes a day for a
month. Within the first week of starting the study, his attention span
increases rapidly. Good ideas come and a good mindset is formed to go into good
plans. But when we work, we have to use the phone, so it is difficult to reduce
it. But try using it in a practical way. Unplug yourself as much as possible.
Use
the Pomodoro technique. Chose a favorite work. It worked for 25 minutes. Took a
break of 05 minutes without going to any obstacle. And after 04 rounds, a break
of about 30 minutes was taken. You can change the number of minutes in a
practical way if you want. But don't cheat, if that happens, you will do it to
yourself. Just think about it now, if you look from the beginning of this
article, when you make a priority list, when you make a not to do list, when
you remove obstacles, when you reduce stress, what have we really done
unknowingly by removing the scattered attention from our attention? Leaving
direct focus. Sometimes in life, if we want to really improve, we need to
reduce some of our things, not to add more things.
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