Have you ever thought about having the ability to stay focused as long as you want on a single task? Like a monk, who can meditate for hours, sometimes even days, without losing concentration?
Of course, you don't have to become a monk, after all, none of your job tasks, for example, takes a lifetime to accomplish — even if it's a long-term goal, you have breaks to sleep, eat, go home, etc.
But many people find it difficult to concentrate even for very short periods of time, and you need to train your ability to concentrate. After all, without it, we can't perform many tasks in our life — at least not with the mastery, agility and quality we would like.
Eu Sem Fronteiras sought the best references on the subject for you. And, during our search, we found an article that talks perfectly about this subject and, therefore, we translated the text for you. The text is authored by Leo Babauta, and the original article was published on the website zenhabits.net. Below, you can read the article in its entirety, but translated into Portuguese.
Enjoy the article and put into practice all the tips the author gives us. They are like gems that help us move forward much faster in our tasks and, consequently, in our lives. Enjoy!
Monk Mind: How to improve your focus
By Leo Babauta
I confess to being as prone to internet distractions as anyone else: I start reading something that interests me and disperse myself in the immensity of the “rabbit hole” for hours (or even days).
But my ability to focus on a single task improved dramatically, and that ability changed my life.
A few years ago, I wouldn't have been able to sit down to work on something without digging into my email or getting distracted on one of my favorite internet forums or websites. Today, I can sit and write.
I can exclude distractions from thinking—when I tell my mind to do so—and focus on something specific. And that changes everything: you get lost in the task you've decided to focus on; he gets so immersed in the subject that he gives everything he has to this work, and it becomes a meditative, transformative moment. Your happiness increases, stress decreases and consequently your work improves. Your life improves.
I know a lot of people have trouble focusing on the same task for too long, so I thought I'd share some tips that worked for me.
Practices to improve your focus
There is no specific way to find focus, but what works for me is clearing everything from the mind and creating space for focus. Some tips for doing this are:
- Close your browser and your email. Do the same with social media. If you need to work on the internet, then make sure that only the tabs of your work are open, that is, only the absolutely necessary ones.
- Disable notifications. Trying to focus on something while notifications of new emails, tweets or Facebook updates pop up is impossible.
- Disconnect the internet. Your connection, literally. Unplug the router or, better yet, go somewhere where there's no internet (yes, those places still exist). That's the best way to find focus.
- Close all programs, windows, and anything else that is not needed to complete your task.
- Have a very important task to do. Not just “checking email”, but “writing a chapter of my book”, or “writing that 'damned' blog post I've been planning”, or “developing that new Android app”.
- Clean your table. There's no need to spend all day on this — put everything in a drawer or closet, or even a box, and put it away later. It's not for fixing now. In fact, there's absolutely nothing to do right now — don't worry about setting up your notebook to write text or anything else.
- Put on the headphones. If there are people around you who can distract you, a great solution is to put on your headphones and listen to some good, calm and peaceful music that helps you focus.
- Use simple programs. For writing, I like plain text editors or programs that block anything else. No distractions.
Once you manage to get that engagement (and you shouldn't spend more than a few minutes getting it), finally, entertain yourself with your task. Do nothing more than this one task. Do not switch to other tasks. Having trouble doing it? Solve them.
How to improve your focus skills
If you can't focus on a single very long task, don't worry. This is completely normal. Our brains have been trained, by technology and society, to change tasks periodically.
One way we've been trained to switch tasks is the fact that switching between email, blogging, or social networks (like Facebook and Twitter) is rewarding — we're rewarded with a small dose of satisfaction every time someone sends us a message. message (social validation), or when we have something new and interesting to read (yay). Task switching becomes a positive feedback loop that is very hard to beat for a single task.
The way to beat task switching is to create a positive feedback loop for focus. Thus:
- start small. You only need to focus for a minute at first. Clean up everything around you, pick a single, important task, and do just that activity for a minute, without alternating with anything else. At first, doing this is difficult. But if you train the ability to focus on being constantly focused, you will be able to do that. At first it will only be a minute.
- Reward yourself. The reward for staying focused for a minute can be a minute (or 30 seconds) on whatever you want. Email, Facebook, whatever. Or get up and walk around for a minute. Stretch, drink some water, massage your neck, enjoy your little victory. Empires are created with small victories.
- Repeat. Continue keeping one minute of focus, one minute of reward (or 30 seconds of reward if you prefer) until you get around half an hour (15 minutes each — focus and reward). Ready. Repeat this process throughout the day. Rejoice in all the work you have already completed. And watch how your own positive feedback loop improves by staying focused.
- Evolve em the steps small. Tomorrow, make that one minute become two—two minutes focused and one minute “off,” that is, doing whatever you want. Repeat this process for 30 minutes and again at the end of the day. Feel free to go wild and do three focus sessions in a day if you feel like it, but it's not necessary.
- Keep on small steps. I believe that now you can see the pattern you need to follow. Go to three minutes focused, one minute off on the third day, then 4:1 (four minutes focused, one minute off), then 5:1, and so on. When you arrive in 10 minutes, be bold and take just two minutes off, meaning two minutes off. When you get to 20 minutes focused, have three minutes off. In 30 minutes of focus, you deserve five minutes off work. And once you can stay focused for 30 minutes, you can stay at that stage. You don't need to become a monk.
Train and keep active the cycle of positive feedback for single tasks performed and you will revert to that programming done for years in our brain to switch tasks that was talked about in the text. You will be able to advance in your work, you will see important tasks being completed by you without so much difficulty - just with the usual difficulty of that task, but not from concentration or lack of concentration.
You will find that focusing will become a form of meditation for you. It's a wonderful thing, really very beautiful, and you can thank me by sending me an invite to a beer in your hometown. Or buying my book — and then I'll use the money to buy a beer.
Written by Giovanna Frugis from the Eu Sem Fronteiras team
