Definition

The ability to concentrate intensely is a skill that must be trained

• Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don't simultaneously wean you mind from a dependence on distraction.

  • You'll struggle to achieve the deepest level so concentration if you spend the rest of your time fleeing the slightest hint of boredom.

  People who multitask all the time can't filter out irrelevancy. They can't manage a working memory. They're chronically distracted - they're pretty much mental wrecks. — Clifford Nass

  When asked whether the chronically distracted recognize this rewiring of the brain:

  Unfortunately, people developed habits of mind that make it impossible for them to be laser focused. (how can { The Shallows - What the Internet is doing to our brains help to mitigate the consequences of this finding?)

  Once you brain has become accustomed to on-demand distraction, it's hard to shake that addiction even when you want to concentrate.

  • If every moment of potential boredom in you life - say, having to wait five minutes in line or sit alone in a restaurant until a friend arrives - is relieved with a quick glance at your smartphone, then your brain has likely been rewired to a point where it's not ready for deep work - even if you regularly schedule time to practice this concentration.

• Strategy: Schedule Internet blocks and offline blocks

  Schedule in advance when you'll use the internet, and then avoid it altogether outside of the these times.

  • The constant switching from low-stimuli/high-value activities to high-stimuli/low-value activities that teach your mind to never tolerate an absence of novelty.
  • Constant switching can be understood as weakening the mental muscles responsible for organizing the many sources vying for your attention.
  • 1. Jobs that requires a lot of time online can still use this strategy
  • 2. Regardless of how you schedule your Internet blocks, you must keep the time outside these blocks absolutely free from Internet Use.
  • 3. Scheduling Internet use at home as well as at work can further improve your concentration training

• Work like Teddy Roosevelt

  • Roosevelt would begin his scheduling by considering the 8 hours from eight a.m. to four thirty p.m. He would then remove the time spent in recitation and classes , this athletic training, and lunch. The fragments left were then considered time dedicated exclusively to studying.

  The amount of time he spent at his desk was comparatively small, but his concentration was so intense, and his reading so rapid, that he could afford more time off than most. — Edmund Morris, biographer

  • 202108012131 - Roosevelt Dash

• Meditate Productively

  Productive meditation: take a period in which you're occupied physically but not mentally - walking, jogging, driving, showering - and focus your attention on a single well-defined professional problem

  • Resists distraction, forcing you to push your focus deeper and deeper on a single problem
  • Suggestion 1: Be wary of distractions and looping
  • Suggestion 2: Structure your deep thinking
  • A side effect of memory training is an improvement in your general ability to concentrate.

Reference

reference: { Deep Work
page: 155
author: & Cal Newport
bib: Newport, Cal (2018). Deep Work: rules for focused success in a distracted world. Grand Central Pub.
tags: #strategy