Every day, Russians spend on average more than six hours on the Internet. This is evidenced by the data of the report of the portal We are social. The development of technology has increased the availability of information and the number of communication tools, but at the same time has created new problems. One of them is a lack of concentration.
Does the phone really affect concentration?
For many years, scientists have been studying the effect of gadgets on the human brain. The research results are disappointing: regularly checking the phone, reading entertaining posts and viewing pictures significantly reduce the user's ability to concentrate on important tasks.
In 2013, researchers from the universities of Ohio and Nebraska found that the use of mobile phones during lectures significantly reduces the effectiveness of the educational process. As part of the study, they asked several groups of students to watch an educational film and then take a test. As a result, young people who did not use smartphones wrote down 62% more information, remembered more details and received better test scores compared to students who did not let go of their mobile phones.
Similar results were published in 2018 by scientists from the University of New Brunswick and Rutgers University. Their study showed that the absence of a ban on the use of gadgets while studying leads to worse exam results.
Is it enough not to pick up the phone while working or studying?
In 2017, a group of scientists from the University of Texas at Austin came to a disappointing conclusion: a gadget that lies on the table and is not used also affects the concentration and productivity of its owner. They asked about 800 subjects to take a difficult test, but before doing so, they asked them to turn their phones to silent mode. Participants were told to leave their gadgets on the table, screen down, in their pocket, bag, or in another room. The results of the study showed that subjects who left their phones in another room significantly outperformed people who left their smartphones on the table in front of them on the test. Their results were also slightly better than those who put their phones in their bag or pocket.
Later, scientists conducted a similar study. This time, they asked the subjects in advance if they had a phone addiction. The results showed that even a turned off phone, lying on the table in front of a study participant with a digital addiction, reduced his productivity. The scientists came to the conclusion that the presence of a smartphone in the field of view of a person leads to the fact that his brain is busy trying to keep the subject from constantly checking the phone, and not solving the intellectual tasks of the test.
How to stop being distracted by the phone?
Not being able to use your gadget is the best way to fight digital addiction. However, since not everyone is ready to part with their smartphone forever, experts recommend starting to dose its use. To do this, you can use the following tips:
- Put your phone out of sight for a while
From the results of a study by Texas scientists, it follows that concentration improves significantly when a person does not see his gadget. Therefore, the habit of leaving the phone in another room or at least in a bag or pocket while you work can greatly increase your productivity.
- Disable notifications and other sounds
Even if the phone is in another room, but its owner can hear a sound notification about a new message, he will inevitably want to read it instantly. Therefore, turning on the silent mode during work will allow you to stop being distracted by the phone. A more radical method is to completely turn off the gadget or use the airplane mode.
- Use the phone only at certain times
A complete ban on the use of gadgets is not always effective. Here you can draw an analogy with the diet: a strict restriction of nutrition and the complete absence of days when you can eat any food often leads to breakdowns. Refusal to use social networks and view the feed of popular applications can negatively affect the emotional state of a person. Therefore, you should not immediately completely forbid yourself to pick up the phone, but set a certain time of day at which you can use your smartphone.
- Install applications that track the time spent on the Web
If you can’t refuse to constantly check your smartphone on your own, you can install a special application that will do it for you. Such programs track user activity and notify how much time he spent on the Web. They also allow you to set a daily limit for using the device or individual applications.
Attention is the concentration of thoughts on something meaningful. Keeping interest in one thing for a long time is not so easy. In order not to be distracted by meaningless things, you need to learn to concentrate your attention. To do this, it needs to be trained like muscles in the gym.
Concentration can be learned by anyone, it just needs to be done constantly. Distractedness and inattention can lead to problems at work, in the family and in relationships.
What is concentration
Concentration of attention is a kind of immersion in a process or situation. For example, when you read an interesting book, you are completely immersed in it, you do not notice the time and what is happening around.
Interest is needed for high-quality concentration of attention. There are situations in life when you don’t want to do something, but you need to. For example, in school or at work. You just need to learn the entire course of lectures for the semester on the night before the exam, complete monthly reports at work right on time. But attention is scattered on a movie on TV, on telephone conversations, and you urgently want to choose a hotel for your vacation or a new blouse in an online store. In order not to be distracted by extraneous things, you need to learn to control your attention.
What makes it difficult to concentrate
If a person has absolutely no interest and motivation for the lesson, then he will postpone the task as much as possible. And also laziness and idleness can interfere with concentration. The longer a person puts off the task for later, the more difficult it is for him to even begin to complete the task. You need to learn to motivate yourself and control yourself. Self-control will help to do everything on time, not to postpone urgent tasks until the last moment.
At work, distractions can be colleagues, social networks, pop-up ads on all sites. At home, the husband, children, chores around the house often distract. Laundry, cleaning, ironing, cooking - all this greatly interferes with focusing on one thing.
You need to learn to abstract from external factors and immerse yourself in the task that you are doing. Silence helps a lot, but in the modern world it is extremely difficult to find a quiet place where no one would touch you. It is better to learn to work in the conditions that are given, to adapt to the environment.
- Take small breaks. To make the brain more active and work better, you need to give it a little rest between tasks or even in the process of performing one task. A short shift of attention will help to fill up with energy. For example, if you don’t see a way to solve a problem, you don’t have the strength to study a boring subject anymore, the numbers in the reports don’t agree, no matter how many times you count, then it’s better to take a short break and let your brain rest. But only a few minutes, so as not to switch attention completely from an urgent task.
- Performing several tasks at the same time does not bring the desired result. Unfortunately, few of us are a descendant of Julius Caesar, who supposedly could do several things at the same time. Multitasking is now very popular, but it does not lead to a quality performance of each task. The more different information enters the brain, the more facts are lost from memory and attention. To do a good job, it is better to do one task. You also need to plan your day. A clear schedule will help keep attention on each task for a certain time.
- Sometimes idleness is useful. To work quickly and efficiently, you need to allow yourself to rest. Everyone relaxes differently. It can be a hot bath after a hard day at work, reading a book, watching a movie, relaxing in nature on a day off, meeting friends, meditating. In order for attention to work efficiently and for a long time, the brain definitely needs to reboot.
- Also it is important to take care of your health. It is extremely difficult to concentrate on work if you feel unwell or tired. Poor health can be psychosomatic. The body through illness can say that the body needs rest. It is very important to listen to your own feelings and not overwork. Feeling good is the first step to developing attention. If something is disturbing in the body, then the brain will automatically switch attention to the disease, and not to urgent work.
- Abstract and get rid of external stimuli. If it is difficult to concentrate on the task, then you need to rid yourself of distractions as much as possible. Close your social media tabs, turn off the sound on your phone, ask co-workers not to touch you for a while, ask your husband to help with household chores. If you eliminate distracting details yourself in advance, you can complete the task faster and better.
Exercises for the development of attention
- Take a close look at your office or room at home. Choose one subject and turn your full attention to it. Within a couple of minutes you need to consider it. For example, a flower in a pot. Without touching it, you need to try to understand what kind of surface the pot has (smooth, ribbed, rough), what color and shape the leaves of the flower are, how the shadow falls. By doing this simple exercise every day, you can learn to gradually focus on more important things.
- You can use the children's game "Find the Differences". Find special pictures with multiple differences. The more of them, the better. Compare two images and find different details that are different. This exercise is great for developing attention to detail.
- A fairy tale can also be an excellent exercise for developing concentration. You can do the exercise with the children or just mentally compose a fairy tale with the participation of surrounding objects. It's quite fun and helps to keep attention longer.
Do not be distracted during working hours on personal matters and conversations. In addition to the time you spend browsing an outside site or talking to a friend on the phone, there are costs associated with re-inclusion in the workflow.
Yes, you need to take breaks in work, but at a time specially allotted for this. Do not constantly interrupt during an important process. Otherwise, then you may not have time to submit the project on time and without errors.
Try to leave personal problems outside your doorstep. Understand that this is for your own good. Discussion of non-working moments knocks down the working mood and discourages. Then it will be difficult for you to get involved in work and return to your immediate duties.
Distracting colleagues
Not even extraneous things can distract you at work. Sometimes, during the execution of a complex, voluminous task, a colleague or manager asks some question that seems to be related to your work duties, but at the moment it is completely unnecessary.
Despite the large amount of work and noisy environment, you can learn how to distribute your work so as not to be distracted from important matters. If you are not sure that in the near future you will be able to work in a state of concentration, do not take on something laborious.
In an atmosphere where you can be disturbed at any moment, it is preferable to perform small tasks that do not require a high degree of concentration. So you will not stand still, and will not suffer from circumstances.
Plan
Record all the things that you need to do. Otherwise, in an emergency, you can forget about some task. It is important to assign each item from the list of upcoming work a degree of criticality and urgency.
Don't forget to review your to-do list from time to time. If possible, set reminders for yourself - a signal on your phone, a pop-up task in the organizer, on a computer, or just a note on a sticky note.
Sort things out by time of day. For example, in the morning and when you are guaranteed peace and quiet, it is better to do the most difficult work. And during the day, when you may be distracted by, say, colleagues, partners or clients, do short tasks.
Try to do non-urgent and unimportant things, for example, sending correspondence or checking mail in the so-called batch mode. That is, instead of being distracted every hour by sending someone a fax, you can collect several documents in half a day, and then send them all at once.
Scientists are sounding the alarm: we have forgotten how to concentrate. Over the past decade, we have been under continuous all-round attack, the purpose of which is to snatch a particle of our attention. Sitting down and working calmly, without distraction, has become an almost impossible task.
American scientist and writer Cal Newport coined the term "deep work". In his opinion . , deep work is an activity that requires absolute attention, which forces us to do our best and, in turn, develops our skills. The better we focus on the case, the higher the quality of our work.
Why do we keep getting distracted
Full immersion in work means focusing on complex tasks for an extended period of time.
But we have internet. And as soon as we are faced with a really difficult task that needs to be tackled in earnest, it is immediately tempting to switch to another tab and see if we missed something interesting.
Despite the fact that we have had the Internet for a long time, we have not yet developed immunity to its distracting effects.
Social networks and applications use the same technique as slot machines - variable reinforcement. When we update our Twitter or Facebook feed, or check our email for the hundredth time, we don't know what we'll get: interesting news, a bunch of nonsense, or nothing at all. But the unpredictability of the result forces us to refresh the page again and again. Gradually, a habit is developed and arises.
How to be less distracted
How not to be distracted at home and on the street
- Delete social networking apps from your phone. If necessary, they can be accessed through a mobile browser, but this is inconvenient, which means you will do it less often.
- Don't take your phone to the toilet. Funny, but saves a lot of time.
- Keep your phone away from the bed. If you already went to bed, then sleep, and do not check the mail.
- Carry your phone not in your pocket, but in your bag or backpack. This will make it harder for you to get it.
How not to be distracted at work
- If you're using the Chrome browser, install Timewarp. In it, you can set up a time counter for selected sites and see how much time you spend on them.
- Switch your phone to Do Not Disturb mode and move it off the table.
- Open windows in full screen mode.
- Hide the browser bookmarks bar.
- Close the mail client and open it only during the time allotted for this.
- Listen to classical or contemporary instrumental music.
Other than that, there are many useful Chrome extensions that you can use. For example, Inbox When Ready hides the inbox, and you can write a letter without being distracted by new mail. News Feed Eradicator hides the Facebook news feed and pops a motivational quote in its place. Or Forest, which grows a virtual tree as you work and mercilessly kills it if you visit blacklisted sites.
How to set yourself up for thoughtful work
- Make a work plan in advance. When it's time to sit down and get right down to the task, it will be much easier for you not to be distracted by following the points of the plan.
- Show interest in the task. It is easier and more enjoyable to go headlong into an interesting and important project than into one that you are indifferent to.
During the work on this material, not a single social network was opened. As a result, work on the article took a third less time than usual.
If there is an exam or session on the nose, and it doesn’t even smell like a five, it’s good that you got on the Internet. In this article, we will look at a step-by-step way to concentrate on studying as much as possible in order to prepare faster and better. All steps are simple, only require a little responsibility.
Step #1 Prepare the site
Room → Home Office
Before you sit down to study, it will be a good idea to create an atmosphere of work for yourself. Let it be the way you imagine it: cheat sheets pasted on the walls, a cup of coffee, a motivating screensaver on your computer. The main thing is to work comfortably. Below is a list of how to create this convenience in your workplace.
- Find a secluded spot without too much noise
- Put things in order, be sure to wipe the dust (breathing and thinking easier - tested on yourself)
- Ventilate the room so as not to "stupid" from a lack of oxygen
- Prepare everything you need: pen, ruler, pencil, calculator, draft, drink
- Take a normal chair with a back and no wheels
After you do these actions, you will have 2 benefits. Firstly, you will pick up the “initial speed” and will already start doing something, and secondly, you will not be distracted by the mess and will be able to stay focused longer.
Technique
Separately, it is worth talking about technology. Constantly checking messages and updates from friends today has become a daily habit: you already automatically go through instagram when you pick up your phone. This is especially annoying if you need a calculator or a search engine.
To prevent this while studying, you need to either remove gadgets altogether, or restrict their impact. For this you can try:
- Turn on Do Not Disturb
- Enable Airplane Mode
- Delete social page networks for a while
- Delete all browser bookmarks
- Place all shortcuts on the desktop in one folder and separately create the "Study" folder
These simple actions can sometimes save yourself a few hours. After all, it happens that you go to rest for 5 minutes, but spend 10 times more time on it.
Step #2 Prepare yourself
Snack
After you have prepared the workplace, you need to take care of yourself. For starters, just have a snack so that the brain focuses on the lessons, and not on food. It is better to eat something light, so as not to fall down on the sofa with an obsessive desire to fall asleep.
You can kill two birds with one stone: eat and increase your concentration. For this, it is recommended to use the following products:
- Green tea
- Greens
- nuts
- Fatty fish (herring, mackerel)
- bitter chocolate
- Water (does nothing on its own, but lack causes fatigue)
While eating watch some video on the topic of your subject or read a short article. So you immediately begin to join the process and get rid of extraneous thoughts.
Thoughts
If we are already talking about thoughts, then we will open this issue more widely. Problems, unresolved issues, dreams and memories can also interfere with concentration, so you need to do it as much as possible before starting classes. Here's how.
And you can not waste time and immediately sit down to study. If the problem is not serious, then obsessive thoughts will gradually calm down and, in the process of immersion, will go away on their own.
Another important aspect that helps to set yourself up is visualization. In your thoughts, you prepare yourself for work in advance, constantly repeating: “now and only today”, “I will work in the evening”, “I will not get up until I do it”, etc. You scroll through the process of work in your head and let the body know that you have to make an effort. With these actions, you cause concentration even before the work begins, and it will be easier for you to get involved in the process later.
Music
Scientists have found that Mozart is good for health, Vivaldi - for and speed of reaction, Beethoven - for getting rid of stress. Some complex neurobiological processes occur in the body, which determine all these positive effects.
But we don't care. It is important for us that music has a calming and relaxing effect. It helps to relieve irritability and increase concentration. Here are some examples of soothing classical music:
- "Moonlight Sonata" - L. Beethoven
- Piano Concerto No. 23 - V.A. Mozart
- "To Elise" - L.V. Beethoven
- Nocturne No. 20 - F. Chopin
- "Waltz of the Flowers" - P.I. Tchaikovsky
You can use not only the classics. Modern compositions and sounds of nature are perfect.
Plan
As Brian Tracy wrote: every minute spent planning saves 10 minutes execution».
Indeed, if you plan the whole process in advance, you will notice that you will finish faster than you expected. Your thoughts won't move from side to side, and this will allow you to concentrate on one subject.
For example, if you are doing an essay - write down the structure and subheadings, if you are studying several subjects - think about the order in which to read them, if you are doing homework - decide what to write off and what to do yourself. You will spend only a couple of minutes, but get rid of the feeling of uncertainty. You will have a structure of work - a skeleton that you can rely on.
Step #3 Concentration while studying
So we come to the most important thing - the learning process. In fact, all the defining steps were taken in the past, and now we only need to learn a couple of effective life hacks.
#1 Breaks
Take breaks after 1 hour work. Scientists have found that it is this distribution of time that helps to maintain better performance.
#2 Deadline
Set yourself hard term. When you set limits for yourself, the brain automatically increases productivity. What you do in a quiet schedule in 3 hours can be done 2 or even 3 times faster.
Only you need to set real restrictions so that it is not possible to slip away. For example, arrange a meeting with a friend, promise to help parents or buy a movie ticket.
#3 Total dedication
Do only 1 thing at 1 time and give it your all. Move your fingers across the table, draw figures in the air, speak out loud, in general - try to connect as many senses as possible. So you comprehensively approach the question, and thereby better focus.
#4 Breath holding
If you are half asleep and tired of studying, try holding your breath. This good exercise shocks the brain and cheers you up.
#5 Goal
Keep the goal in mind, imagine freedom and pleasure after completing tasks. Otherwise, you can slip and quickly become discouraged.
A little motivation
Many people do not need all the past reasoning at all. For them, the main difficulty is the lack of interest in learning and boredom.
But what is there to say? The quote from artist Chuck Close describes it all: "Inspiration for amateurs, the rest just come and work". A person never does only what he loves, there are always problems and routine.
You just need to sit down and start, without any excuses. Raise your ass and get used to breaking your “I don’t want to” every day. This is what life is about, this is the kind of behavior that makes respect yourself . Don't be lazy, start developing your character right now.
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