OK, so if you've got this far you obviously want to learn how to improve your concentration which has been destroyed primarily by social media and your smartphone. Right so let's dive straight in and start to develop your superpower.
Ridding Yourself Of Distractions
You are going to get a lot of mental kickback from this one, however if you get through, you will not be like the others who get this advice, think to themselves nah, this is bs, I'm fine with my life the way it is, and you will have an advantage over them.
Notifications
If concentration was a superhero, then notifications would be its Kryptonite. There is nothing so insidiously distracting as a notification, be it on your desktop or on your phone.
"Oh it's fine, I'll just leave them on and ignore them." I hear you say . . .
Well my friend, I'm afraid it's not as easy as that, you see there is something called attention slew, this isn't a made-up thing. It is fully observable and testable, it is a distinct phenomena.
As the name suggests, attention slew describes the state of mind you are in when your attention is flicked from one activity to another.
So you might be writing a Steemit article for instance, and you get a notification that there's a new Java update available. You close it and carry on writing, then ten minutes later you find yourself writing about the Java update! (Hmmmm).
This is worse when they are notifications about replies to posts you've made on various social media sites. If these things are coming through on your desktop it's bad enough, but on your phone, oh boy! You might as well kiss goodbye to your attention span forever, because you pretty much always have your phone with you.
Step 1
Remove Facebook and any other social media from your phone (yes even Steemit, eSteem whatever it's called).
Step 2
Go into your desktop settings and disable all (non-critical) notifications.
Step 3
Unless you are some kind of mobile emergency worker or equivalent, whereby it is crucial (life-or-death) that you are contactable by email, and I don't mean your boss might get a bit upset if you don't answer within an hour, I mean somebody might actually die, then get rid of your phone email sync/notifications.
You can still leave it on there, but here's the thing, after just seven days of unsyncing your email from your phone, analyse how much you've really missed it. I'm guessing that unless you are the aforementioned life-or-death emergency worker, then the world is still spinning and you can carry on ignoring 99% of your emails.
Be Bored!
Justin Timberlake once famously brought sexy back, I need you to bring boredom back. Seriously, your ability to be comfortable in boredom is directly correlated to your ability to concentrate.
Step 1
If you take the bus/subway/train or whatever, and you usually whip out your phone as soon as you're on there, then next time, simply, don't.
Instead watch the other people doing just that and smile to yourself as you know that soon you will have a tremendous advantage over all of them. You will be able to concentrate on things for longer than eight nanoseconds, and they will not!
Step 2
If you do what I (used to) do and watch TV/Netflix/Youtube when you sit down to eat, cut this habit out immediately.
You will be surprised how quickly and easy this one is to shed. What you'll find is you start concentrating more on your food, depending on your cooking that could be a good or bad thing!
You'll also notice that your mind will wander and you'll start thinking of random stuff, great! Let it wander, this is especially important if you consider yourself to be any kind of creative.
Step 3
Go to the toilet alone! Yeah sure, I know you do that already, but not really; right? Because like a lot of people, you take your phone into the toilet, and you use that opportunity to go onto Facebook, eSteem, or whatever.
Instead, leave it behind and just go to the damn toilet already! Don't take a book or newspaper (especially newspaper) either.
What you're trying to do here, is to signify to your brain that you don't mind being bored now and again, and it doesn't have to get all agitated and look for something to do.
Master this one alone and watch how serene and focused you become (grasshopper).
OK, I reckon this circa 800 word article is probably getting to the limits of your attention, in Part 3 I'll give you some other tips on how to expand it even further!
DO YOU TAKE PART IN ANY OF THE ATTENTION-DESTROYING HABITS ABOVE? DO YOU WANT TO GET MORE FOCUS IN YOUR LIFE? WILL YOU TRY THESE TECHNIQUES?
AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
Title Image by Hugh Han on Unsplash