“Why’d I come into this room? Where are my keys? What did I just read? What did you just say? I had a great idea … and then lost it!”
We all suffer from it: attention drifts. We lose the moment and, worse, the information it contains. Staying focused is not a matter of intelligence, although the problem definitely makes us doubt what we’ve got. It’s not a matter of education, although learned methods can fix it. It’s all about ancient biology and modern culture. But there is a solution!
Biology Meets Culture
Imagine leaving your cave eons ago. On your quest for food, you hear noises, cross paths with predators, discover new berries, and encounter natural barriers that stop your progress. Your survival depends on staying focused and paying attention to the right things, deciding what the possible rewards are, handling threats with fight-flight-freeze options, processing new information, recalling what you know, and solving new problems. Over a million years, biology honed these processes into a finely tuned system that operates in seconds, loops back on itself, and works without conscious control.
Fast forward to today. The automatic and continuous nature of attention, reward, stress reactions, working memory, and analytical thinking gives the brain multiple opportunities to drift. It’s like the silver ball in a pinball game ricocheting from bumper to bumper. So, you’ll glance at your text messages and think about those – because they’re attention grabbers and pleasurable – as your eyes move along “reading” a text. Or you’ll listen to what’s easy or most agreeable in a conversation and miss the new, complicated requests for work. It’s not hard to pay attention and stay focused; it’s just challenging to keep it focused on information that we need but don’t automatically relish.
And then there’s modern culture. We live in a complex multi-media, multi-modality, multi-cultural, multi-activity, multi-role world. Inputs and demands for our attention come from our electronics, social media, businesses, government, organizations, family, friends, jobs, schools, and even strangers. We typically function in sensory overload, reacting to the world, and mentally pinging from one call to the next. Gone are the days of simple berry picking and hunting one animal at a time!
The Mind Fix
Are we powerless victims of biology and culture? By no means! The ultimate upshot of our biology is the development of the conscious mind. It can control the autopilot brain and convert the whole system to manual control. With the mind in charge, you can choose what to focus on, value, comprehend, think, and remember.
Staying focused begins with concentration. Concentration is a learnable skill set. It directs and maintains attention on your chosen focus point. Here’s how to do it:
| Step 1 | Be present. Turn your senses and thoughts to the now that matters to you. |
| Step 2 | Identify and eliminate distractions. Put aside the noise of external devices, other’s requests, and your off-task thoughts. |
| Step 3 | Use conscious thinking techniques. The simplest one is using a writing tool. You can record thoughts, take notes, mark texts, or even draw pictures. It creates total focus, because you can only think of that one thing as you use the writing tool. |
| Step 4 | Single task. If focus is what you want, don’t introduce opportunities to drift. |
| Step 5 | Pay attention to your attention. Note when it drifts and repeat steps 1 through 4 as needed. |
Step 1
Be present.
Turn your senses and thoughts to the now that matters to you.
Step 2
Identify and eliminate distractions.
Put aside the noise of external devices, other’s requests, and your off-task thoughts.
Step 3
Use conscious thinking techniques.
The simplest one is using a writing tool. You can record thoughts, take notes, mark texts, or even draw pictures. It creates total focus, because you can only think of that one thing as you use the writing tool.
Step 4
Single task.
If focus is what you want, don’t introduce opportunities to drift.
Step 5
Pay attention to your attention.
Note when it drifts and repeat steps 1 through 4 as needed.
Focusing is all about controlling your attention and thoughts. Being focused a matter of taking charge and making choices!
In the End…
Why is it so hard to stay focused? Biological brain processes are very powerful. They automatically jump to flashy, easy, quick rewards or immediate dangers. They tend to dismiss the new, personal, and challenging items that aren’t attention grabbers. Culture adds to all of this by presenting lots of flashy or noisy attention getters. So, we react and lose focus.
What’s the solution? It’s the mind! Our conscious thoughts can control all of those brain processes and cultural distractors. Deliberate strategies can shift our focus to inner choices, most desired outcomes, and being here now.
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