Photo: Columbia Pictures/Getty Images Woody Allen has never sent an email. He does not own a computer. (He admits to owning an iPhone, but only for making calls and listening to jazz while traveling.) After over 50 years in the film business, Allen’s daily routine hasn’t changed one iota: He still sketches out his script ideas in freehand on a yellow legal pad…
Concentration, or the ability to focus on a task at hand while blocking out distracting stimuli or thoughts, is one of our most powerful mental tools. When at optimal levels, concentration helps make our work flow easier, retain information better, and complete tasks in appropriate amounts of time. It can become difficult to focus our attention and proper amount…
While mental exercise is important for brain health, that doesn’t mean you never need to break a sweat. Physical exercise helps your brain stay sharp. It increases oxygen to your brain and reduces the risk for disorders that lead to memory loss, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Exercise also enhances the effects of helpful brain chemicals and reduces…
The science behind concentration and improved focus Isn’t it sweet when you lose yourself in the work you’re doing? You get the rush of real productivity, not just ‘busy work’. You have a strong feeling of purpose and completely lose track of time. Whether you call it concentration, focus, flow, or even work-induced trance, you have to admit it’s really an exhilarating…
I often hear my clients complain of difficulty concentrating. Be it on the job, on their creative tasks, or even in their daily routines, I frequently hear them talk about difficulty keeping track of their ever-growing list of to-do’s and their frantic efforts to keep themselves organized and on top of their various roles and demands. I hear them tell me about…
Attention Game: Stroop This game is a variation on the famous Stroop effect. It s a fun way to test your ability to focus while processing information. It will train you to focus, improve your concentration, and pay attention. Attention and Age As we get older the challenges associated with inattentiveness grow. Deteriorating visual attention can affect behavior…
Funny things happen when I snap my fingers. On a stage in Syracuse, a grown man fell instantly and deeply into a state of total relaxation and collapsed onto the floor. At a training event in Philadelphia, a woman became convinced she was communicating with extraterrestrials and started shouting in beeps and whistles. During a conference in Cleveland, an executive…
A wandering mind is common for people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Whether you’re talking to your boss or best friend, you might easily lose track of conversations. Or get easily distracted and forget what you were working on. Or miss details and make careless mistakes. But this isn’t an oversight on your part. An inability to focus is…
In case you haven’t noticed, I write about all the stuff I suck at. And here’s my worst struggle yet: staying focused. But this discipline is a non-negotiable for a writer. It’s essential for anyone who is serious about doing great work. I don’t care if you have to trick yourself into it. If you’re going to do stuff that matters, you will need to find a way to…
They say the key to success is to simply show up every day and do what needs to be done. But showing up is the easy part. How to focus and stay on-task is the real challenge. Like an old lawn mower, it probably takes a few tries to get going. However, when you do, you enter a state of focus where you forget the world and are able to get lost in your work. It’s…
There is no shortage of distraction in life. If you re trying to focus on work, your family needs your attention. Try to focus on family, and the duties of the job get in the way. People load up with hobbies and trips and learning and aspirations and TV and Internet surfing and video games and social media. And then there are all those distractions caused by…
Reduce Hyperactivity and Improve Your Child’s Ability to Focus with These Simple Diet Changes Diet and behavior go hand in hand so it’s no surprise that many of the symptoms of ADHD like hyperactivity and inability to focus can sometimes be improved by changing the way your child eats. Studies have shown that eating foods high in protein, controlling sugar intake…
Photo: Adam Levey 1 of 5 I m so scatterbrained—I must have ADHD. It s a lament that doctors like Michael Coates, MD, are hearing more and more from adult patients, many of whom assume medication is the answer to their woes. Yet most people don t have ADHD, nor do they need a pill, says Coates, who chairs the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Wake…
If you start hitting wayward passes and miscuing your shots (more than usual), take a break – it’s a sign your football brain is running low on power. A study in Australia on how players react to mental strain found technique suffered just as much as physical output. Players passing and shooting was found to be less accurate, and even their reactions and forward…
Many people who turn to meditation for stress relief find focused meditation easier than traditional meditation practices. That is because this meditation exercise allows you to focus your attention on an object, sound or some other stimulus rather than trying to achieve a clear mind. Focused meditation is something that everyone can do at home without an instructor…
How you identify a single, concrete, measurable goal. Humanistic. Focus on who you want to help rather than jumping to solutions. Empathize with your audience to develop Points of View (POV): [USER] needs to [USER’S NEEDS] because [SURPRISING INSIGHT]. Actionable. Use tactical micro goals to achieve long-term macro goals. Testable. Identify metrics that will…
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a brain disorder marked by an ongoing pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that interferes with functioning or development. Inattention means a person wanders off task, lacks persistence, has difficulty sustaining focus, and is disorganized; and these problems are not due to defiance or lack…
Everyone who works on a computer would know that it’s not easy to concentrate on work the entire time. This is especially apparent when working on your own computer where there’s no network restrictions to what websites you can visit, giving you the ease of access to social networks, non-work related news websites or watching tech channels on YouTube. Doing any…
If you want to succeed in life, if you want to get what you desire most, if you want to achieve your goals… you need to master the art of focus. And of course, this doesn’t only apply to succeeding in your business, advancing your career or improving your financial situation. It holds true for every aspect of your life: finding more fulfillment, creating better…
On the other hand, people who multi-task are more likely to make mistakes, get distracted, struggle with creative work, produce less and/or lower quality output and achieve fewer goals. They are also more likely to experience higher levels of stress. There are also studies that suggest that habitual multitasking may be impacting the physical structure of the…
The proof that we are not the mind comes with training. Accept the idea in theory, and in time, as your control over your thoughts grows, you will know it as a fact. In reality, you, the real you, is the one mastering the mind. It is not the mind mastering itself. Advice for Practicing the Concentration Exercises Find a place where you can be alone and undisturbed…
I call it the September phenomenon. My practice fills with children getting ready for school, college students grabbing their last-minute prescriptions and everyone questioning whether they should refill their ADD/ADHD medicine of choice. It is always interesting to see the diversity amongst my ADD population. Many young children and adolescents love the feeling…
It happens all the time. When building a new online business, many entrepreneurs become scattered and distracted in both strategy and execution, trying to move in too many directions at the same time. This lack of focus ends up causing a lack of real movement for the business in any one particular direction and can ultimately lead to failure. In this post we…
In a recent post, I provided an overview of the How Hiring Process Impacts Performance matrix shown below. It demonstrates the concept that the quality of the process a company uses to hire people is a great predictor of the quality of the people actually hired. Given this, all a company needs to do to improve its hiring results is to benchmark how the best people…
