How to Train Your
Brain to Stay Focused
Nadia Goodman
As an entrepreneur, you have a lot on your plate.
Staying focused can be tough with a constant stream of
employees, clients, emails, and phone calls demanding your attention. Amid
the noise, understanding your brain’s limitations
and working around them can improve your focus and
increase your productivity.
Our brains are finely attuned to distraction, so today's
digital environment makes it especially hard to focus. "Distractions
signal that something has changed," says David Rock, co-founder
of the NeuroLeadership Institute and author of Your
Brain at Work (HarperCollins, 2009).
"A distraction is an alert says, 'Orient your attention
here now; this could be dangerous.'"
The brain's reaction is automatic and virtually
unstoppable.
While multitasking is an important skill, it also has a
downside.
"It reduces our intelligence, literally dropping our
IQ," Rock says. "We make mistakes,
miss subtle cues, fly off the handle when we shouldn't,
or spell things wrong."
To make matters worse, distraction feels great.
"Your brain's reward circuit lights up when you multitask,” Rock says,
meaning that you get an emotional high when you're doing a lot at once.
Ultimately, the goal is not constant focus, but a short
period of distraction-free time every day. "Twenty minutes a day of deep
focus could be transformative," Rock says.
Try these three tips to help you become more focused and
productive:
1. Do creative
work first.
Typically, we do mindless work first and build up to the
toughest tasks.
That drains your energy and lowers your focus.
"An hour into doing your work, you've got a lot less
capacity than (at the beginning)," Rock says. "Every decision we make
tires the brain."
In order to focus effectively, reverse the order. Check
off the tasks that require creativity
or concentration first thing in the morning, and then
move on to easier work,
like deleting emails or scheduling meetings, later in the
day.
2. Allocate your
time deliberately.
By studying thousands of people,
Rock found that we are truly focused for an average of
only six hours per week.
"You want to be really diligent with what you put
into those hours," he says.
Most people focus best in the morning or late at night,
and Rock's studies show that 90 percent of people do
their best thinking outside the office.
Notice where and when you focus best, then allocate your
toughest tasks for those moments.
3. Train your mind
like a muscle.
When multitasking is the norm, your brain quickly adapts.
You lose the ability to focus
as distraction becomes a habit. "We've trained our
brains to be unfocused," Rock says.
Practice concentration by turning off all distractions
and committing your attention to a single task. Start small, maybe five minutes
per day, and work up to larger chunks of time.
If you find your mind wandering, just return to the task
at hand.
"It’s just like getting fit," Rock says. "You have to
build the muscle to be focused."
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225321
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