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Strategies to Increase Focus in Work and Learning Part 2 In the first part of this series, we had discussed building comfort zones and creating environmental and physical conditions conducive for increasing concentration and focus, in this part we would be dealing with creating the mindset and handling distractions. Constant distractions are a part of modern-day living. iPhones, iPads, continuous internet browsing, emails, instant messages and keeping up with social activities at the press of a button is commonplace and hurts our abilities to concentrate and focus on high-priority tasks. Doctors have a name for this syndrome – the ADT or Attention Deficit Trait. Entire student societies, organizations and companies can suffer from ADT. To bring attention deficit under control and channel your concentration to the task at hand, the simple tips in this article would help you enormously.
Schedule your worries:
worries or concerns is necessary. Even though they are ‘persistent’ you should not let them pursue you
Well we know that may sound funny, because causes of
everywhere and at all times.
worries are unscheduled. However, there are different kinds of worries – instant and persistent. Instant
Prioritize the tasks that demand your attention:
worries like that before your examination or before a public performance need to be handled instantly, of
Prioritization is the master key to time and effort
course. However, there are persistent worries like ‘how
management. As a law student, most of the time you’d
to get a job,’ ‘where to find the money for tomorrow,’
be feeling that you have too much to do and too little
‘how to bring back friendship with Joe,’ and so on and
time to do it. But you are not in a unique situation.
so forth.
First, realize that. Then find out how to prioritize between your tasks, write them down in a list, and
Persistent worries eat into a big chunk of our time
sometimes it’s helpful to create a list at night for the
and keep intruding on our efforts to focus our minds.
next day. Sometimes, students move at high-speed
Sometimes, instant worries become persistent. If a
from one task to another creating the impression of
friend has an accident it is cause of instant worry, after
doing a lot when in actuality achieving little. Be aware
s/he is into medical care then his/her recovery can
of this common failing, create a ‘to-do’ list, prioritize
become a persistent worry. What we want to stress
according to two perspectives – first delivery schedule
is that schedule routine times and set them aside to
of the work and then the eighty-twenty principle, that
address persistent worries, so that when they try to
is which important tasks can be finished with the least
intrude upon your thought you can send them away by
effort and time – do them first and reduce the backlog.
telling yourself, ‘I will think of these at their appointed time.’
Work Sequentially:
Since you set an ‘appointed time’ for considering
Take up one task at a time. Multi-tasking does not
those causes of concern, it frees your conscience
mean driving and texting at the same time, but
to focus on the task at hand and helps to learn and
completing tasks of radically different nature within the
concentrate your attention. This is why, including
same time-frame. That does not mean doing them at
a time for addressing or thinking about ‘persistent’
the same time. Within a time-frame, you still need to
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