Tips for Maintaining Concentration

With all this brain discipline, you should now start to find that concentrating on what you need to is a little easier. Now you’re working on things that you love and already find highly engaging and valuable and you’re using cognitive restructuring to make sure that this importance stays right at the forefront of your mind at all times.Now your brain chemistry and the activation in your brain should all be supporting a highly focused and engaged state.

But there are a few more things you can do as well to help yourself stay even more focused…

Listen to Music

Remember how your attention works in both a ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ manner? In other words, if you’re deep in focus while working on an all-important project, you can still find your attention interrupted if there’s a loud noise from somewhere else or if you start to pick up on a conversation that sounds interesting.

So to help yourself concentrate better, you really need to be able to block out those distractions and a great way to do that is by listening to some music while at the same time using noise cancelling headphones. Also important is to use the right kind of music.

There is some evidence to suggest that listening to music can actually ‘entrain’ brainwaves meaning that our brains become more active when we listen to faster music. Pick something with a rapid, steady beat then and you may work faster. Pick something more relaxed conversely and you’ll be more likely to be creative and come up with more interesting and unique ideas.

Another tip is to try listening to music on loop. That might not sound very exciting but that’s exactly the point – when we listen to the same sounds over and over our brain eventually becomes desensitized to them. This is why we don’t get disturbed by a ticking alarm clock for instance.

Listen to the same non-vocal, up-tempo album on loop and it will eventually fade into the background leaving only your dorsal attention stream (at least for your ears). This is actually a technique that Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress, reportedly uses.

Caffeine

There’s a reason that many of us start our day with a big cup of coffee. As it happens, caffeine is very effective for increasing energy and concentration. Ever wondered how caffeine works? Essentially it works by blocking specific receptors in the brain, those receptors being the A1 receptors. This in turn prevents the inhibitory neurotransmitter ‘adenosine’ from affecting the brain, which means that we don’t get as sleepy or tired.

The lack of adenosine meanwhile causes an increase in general activity throughout the brain and that in turn leads to a surge of other catecholamine neurotransmitters such as dopamine and norepinephrine. Together, these enhance our focus and help us to concentrate longer and harder. Struggling to concentrate first thing in the morning? Then try drinking some caffeine!

Removing Other Distractions

Meanwhile, you should also remove other distractions from your environment and especially those that try to tempt you away from your work. One of the biggest distractions for many of us these days is the internet. Whether we’re watching cat videos, browsing Facebook or checking email, the web always seems to offer something else to distract us and prevent us from paying attention.

Thus a great strategy when you really need to work is to shut yourself off. That means either unplugging the internet for a bit, or using a piece of software such as ‘Freedom’ which will automatically disconnect you for certain periods. Obviously, this doesn’t work if you need the web to produce your work. But otherwise, you can use this in order to leave yourself with nothing to do but work.

And if your work requires you to use a specific piece of software – such as Word – then you may be able to go one step further even by switching off your mouse! The same goes for removing the GameBoy from within reach, or that magazine. If it’s guilty of robbing you of your time then cut it out.

Introducing the Right Distractions

You know what though?

It’s impossible to always be fully focused. With the best will in the world, your brain is only capable of concentrating for so long before it gives up the ghost and that’s why it’s very important to introduce strategic breaks into your workload. Desk toys are things like cats’ cradles, small desktop rock gardens, or games of one player solitaire.

These are the perfect distractions because they don’t suck you in.So when you need to take a micro-break and you look up from your computer, you now have something you can fiddle with or look at that won’t end up steeling countless hours. This strategy works because it’s better that you be distracted by a desktop toy for two minutes than you be distracted by a computer game for 30.