How to learn to work without distractions. Library of Psychology. An effective relaxation technique: square breathing

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Improving your concentration can help you succeed at work and school and become a happier, more organized person. If you want to become more attentive, you need to learn to avoid distractions and clearly develop a specific action strategy to complete the task. If you want to learn how to become “hyper-focused,” follow our tips.

Steps

Improved concentration

1. Work on your attention span. Any of us can start with a certain level of attention span, but most believe that it needs to improve over time. To improve your attention span, give yourself a certain amount of time, such as half an hour, to do a specific task. When this time is up, see how much longer you can work without being distracted from the task. It doesn't matter how long it is - 5 minutes or another half hour.

   • If you repeat this experiment, you will see that you are able to concentrate on one task for much longer than you thought. Continue to train your attention in this way until you feel the need to stop. The next day, try to concentrate longer.

2. Meditate . Meditation not only helps you relax, but also improves your ability to concentrate step by step, provided that you meditate for 10-20 minutes every day. When you meditate, you focus on clearing your thoughts and focusing on your physical state and breathing. These skills can be easily applied when you need to get rid of bad thoughts and concentrate on work. You can meditate both in the morning and before bed. Both options can be used.

   • Find a relatively quiet place where you will not be distracted by outside noises.
   • Find a comfortable place and place your hands on your knees.
   • Work on relaxing your body. This must be done step by step until all parts of the body are relaxed.

3. Less multitasking. Many people find that multitasking is great for helping them achieve their goals faster and complete two or three tasks at a time. Remember that multitasking harms your ability to concentrate. When you multitask, you think you've accomplished more, but in reality you haven't devoted your full attention and desire to any one of them, and you've damaged your focus.

   • Work on completing only one task at a time and you will see your pace increase.
   • If you constantly chat online with your friends while doing work, you are getting caught up in one of the worst forms multitasking. Chatting with a friend can cut your productivity in half.
   • If you work from home, avoid the temptation to do housework while studying or working. You can wash the dishes, but by doing so you will significantly slow down the pace of the task.

Preparation

1. Analyze. Have you ever had a day that you "worked through" and then wondered why the results weren't great? If this has happened to you, you need to analyze your mistakes before starting a new unsuccessful day. Before starting work, you need to write down everything that was successful and unsuccessful during the work or school day to make sure that everything will work out in the future.

   • You were supposed to be studying and you spent the entire day gossiping with a schoolmate? In this case, you need to do homework by oneself.
   • You were supposed to work in your office, but you spent the whole day solving the problems of your colleagues and did nothing for yourself? In this case, you need to help less and become a little more selfish.
   • Have you spent the whole day chaotically reading articles posted on Facebook, texting friends and discussing plans for the evening? It's better to do this after the end of the working day.
   • Before you start your workday, write down what is stopping you from achieving your goals to reduce the likelihood of making mistakes.

2. Prepare well for the job. It doesn't matter whether you're going to the library or going to the office for an 8-hour day, you need to be well prepared for upcoming work to start the day with a positive attitude. You need to find motivation to complete all your tasks.

   • Get a good night's sleep. Get up and go to bed at the same time so that you feel alert and rested when you wake up and don’t feel depressed or tired.
   • Eat healthy food for breakfast. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so you need to eat enough to get the energy you need to perform your work responsibilities. You cannot overeat so as not to be indifferent and inert in relation to what is happening around you. Eat foods rich in carbohydrates, such as oatmeal or wheat porridge. For breakfast, you need to eat foods containing proteins (eggs, lean turkey), as well as fruits and vegetables.
   • Take time to exercise. 15-20 minutes of walking, aerobics, squats or abdominal exercises will improve the tone of the heart muscle without leaving you tired.
   • Control your caffeine intake. Coffee helps get you going in the morning, but try not to drink more than one cup a day or you'll feel groggy by lunchtime. Switch to low-caffeine tea or try to wean yourself off caffeine if you want to have a productive day.

3. Choose the right time and place. Chances are, you don't have the freedom to start and end your workday as you wish if you work in an office. If you have a flexible schedule, you can start work at a time when you are more alert and choose an environment that helps you get in the mood for work.

   • Remember that each of us has different hours of greatest productivity. Some people are most productive in the morning, while others need to get ready to work in the morning. daytime. Choose a time when your body is ready to say “Let's go!” instead of the phrase “I want to sleep.”
   • Finding the right work environment is very important. Some people enjoy working outside the home and feel quite comfortable doing so. Others are motivated by working in a coffee shop or library, where everyone is busy doing their own thing.

4. Try to anticipate your needs. If you want to be as productive and focused as possible, you need to anticipate your needs before you do anything. You won't be able to concentrate if your body requires rest.

   • Stock up on healthy snacks: nuts, apples, bananas and carrots. This will help stimulate your body so that you don't work automatically.
   • Drink more. Always carry a water bottle with you wherever you go to stay hydrated.
   • Wear several layers of clothing. If the room where you work is too hot or cold, you should be prepared to take off a few clothes, or, conversely, throw on a scarf or sweater. You can't compromise your concentration if you're sweating or shivering and can't help it.

Get Organized

1. Write a list of tasks. If you want to become more focused, make a to-do list every day and have it in front of you so you can check what you've already accomplished. This list will help guide you on how to achieve your goals. Instead of wasting your time, review your to-do list and you can feel proud after completing them.

   • Write down at least three tasks that need to be completed today; three tasks due tomorrow and three tasks due next week. First, take care of the things that need to be done today. Feeling satisfied with a job well done will help you get started on the rest of your tasks.
   • Reward yourself with breaks from work. Every time you finish a task on your list, give yourself the opportunity to rest for a while.

2. Set your priorities. Remember that the most difficult and creative tasks should be completed in the morning, when you are full of energy and inspiration. Save light tasks (scheduling meetings, filling out paperwork, cleaning the work area) for lunch, when you feel most tired.

   • Don't put off your most difficult task until the evening. You will see how it flows smoothly into the next day.

3. Organize your workspace. Organizing your workspace is the key to concentration. It's much easier to concentrate if you know what goes where in your office; where the desk is, your bag, which creates the overall picture of the workspace. Organizing your workspace will save a lot of time and give you motivation to complete tasks.

   • Remove everything from your work area that is not related to your work. An exception may be photographs on the table. Everything else should be work related. It doesn’t matter what it is: paper, a stapler or a set of pens.
   • Set aside mobile phone, if you need to do some serious work. You can check it every hour, but you can't keep your phone on the table, otherwise you will feel an overwhelming urge to look at it all the time.
   • Organize the process of filling out documents. If you know exactly where all your documents are, you will save a lot of time throughout the day.

4. Manage your time correctly. Time management is a critical component of focus. When you start a new workday or write a list of tasks, write down how long you think it will take to complete each one. You will have an idea of ​​what your work day will look like. At the top of the list, indicate those tasks that require a lot of time to complete. You can cross them out as you progress.

   • Set adequate goals for yourself - this rule can be applied to any task. You cannot devote 20 minutes to something that will take an hour, otherwise failure to complete the assigned tasks will disappoint you.
   • If you completed a task early, take a short break. This method will give you motivation.

5. Incorporate breaks into your work schedule. Breaks are of utmost importance, just like completing a task. If your schedule alternates periods of peak activity with short pauses, you will be more focused than if you spent the entire day working without breaks.

   • Take breaks of 10-20 minutes every hour. This time can be used for phone call, replying to a message from a friend or having a cup of tea.
   • Think of breaks as rewards for working hard. Use them as motivation. If you think like this: “As soon as I finish this paper, I can drink a delicious smoothie,” you will be much more motivated. If there is nothing positive on the horizon, interest in the outcome will decrease.
   • One of the breaks can be used to do exercises. A 15-minute walk or jog up five flights of stairs will help perk you up and give you energy.
   • Take a break to get some fresh air. You can't spend the whole day without leaving your home or office. Go to Fresh air to enjoy the morning freshness or catch a ray of sunshine on your face. After a walk, you will be more focused and ready to work.

How to Avoid Sources of Distraction

1. Avoid the Internet. It's filled with interesting and valuable information, but when it comes time to work, the Internet can be a huge distraction. If you really want to get work done, you need to avoid Facebook and texting friends during the workday. If the need arises, you can check your email several times a day.

   • If you notice interesting article, tell yourself that you will read it during the break, but not before.
   • Avoid personal correspondence while working. It's distracting and you'll end up spending more time completing tasks than you intended.
   • If you don't need the Internet for work, unplug the cable. You can access the Internet once every two hours.
   • Online sources of distraction are taking everything away work time. If you log into Facebook or check your email every 15 minutes, try to increase this period to half an hour. You will see if you can check your email 2-3 times a day and completely stop using Facebook at work.
   • If you need the Internet for work, try not to open more than five tabs at once. Concentrate on what needs to be done and stay on task. If you have twice as many bookmarks open as you need, your brain will automatically tune in to multitasking.

2. Don't let other people distract you from your work. People are the main source of distraction if you work in an office or library. Don't let them distract you from your goals. It can be tempting to socialize with colleagues while working. In this case, the pace of work will slow down and you will spend more time on it.

   • Let your employees know that getting your job done is important to you. It doesn't matter whether you work at home or in the office. Your colleagues won't interfere when they see how dedicated you are to your job.
   • Do not accept personal calls or messages unless absolutely necessary. Ask your family and friends to call you only when necessary, and you will receive fewer messages.
   • If you have a friend from school or university who works with you, make sure you are both engaged in work. You can even clap your hands if your colleagues are distracted to remind them of the importance of staying focused.

   Stay motivated. If you want to avoid sources of distraction and become more focused, your best bet is to find motivation to complete a task. You need to write down what motivates you to work, and refer to this reason several times a day to remind yourself how important it is to focus and not be distracted by other things.

   • Consider the importance of your work. Reassure yourself that when you grade students, it is important to provide them with feedback. If you complete a project, you do it for the success of the company.
   • Consider your situation. What will it benefit you if the work gets done? If you are preparing for test work, you can get a good grade or improve GPA. If you have a contract with a client, you may be eligible for a raise.
   • Think about what reward you will receive for the work you have done. Remind yourself about interesting activities, which you can do after work. This could be a yoga class, meeting an old friend for ice cream, or great dinner with your lover.

Studying for an exam or test can be very difficult and stressful, especially if you are constantly distracted. It is important to concentrate, get rid of distractions and take care of the appropriate environment.

Steps

What do we have to do

Take short breaks . After 45 minutes of studying, take a 10-minute break and distract yourself with something else. Then get back to studying. The break should not last more than 20 minutes.

Motivate yourself . If you prepare thoroughly, you will do well in the exam. Enjoy the exam. Don't think of it as something grandiose, but as a chance to test your knowledge.

Get busy studying. You have everything you need for this and nothing is holding you back. Just you and the textbooks. Well? What are you waiting for?

• Take short notes and use flashcards. Cards are useful because they contain important information in a compressed form. If it helps you, take notes and draw diagrams.
• Use a mnemonic system. This is a system for remembering information. Make up a fun song or an acronym for the information (for example, LHC - Large Hadron Collider) to make it easier to remember the information you need.
• Study the most important information first, and then move on to the rest of the material. Learn and understand the basic concepts before going deeper. This will give you a base level of understanding to work with further.
• Ask yourself why you need classes, what benefit they will bring. Write down your answers on a piece of paper. Whenever you start to get distracted, look at this sheet to remind yourself that studying is important to you.

What not to do

1. Do not panic! When we panic, we make mistakes, so remain completely calm. If you prepare well, you won't need to panic during the exam. Take a deep breath, tell yourself, “I can do this,” and calm down.

   Use the computer as little as possible . You will remember information better if you take notes manually. Also refrain from using your phone as it is very distracting.

The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset wrote:

Every fate is tragic in the deepest sense of the word for one who does not penetrate into the essence of life, but only skims its surface.

Alarming symptoms

How often during a conversation do you want to interrupt a person with words “in short” or “get to the point”? Do you often grab your smartphone while watching an interesting series or movie, don’t listen to people, but only fake attention, get irritated over trifles?

Our attention has become so unfocused that it is sometimes difficult for us to keep it on one thing for more than 10 minutes. If you think that this is normal for the modern world, then we hasten to upset you.

These are the first symptoms of attention deficit disorder. Consider these the letters SOS, which say that the “muscle” of attention urgently needs to be taken to the “gym.”

The Cost of Distraction

Do you know that average person wastes almost two out of eight hours during the workday? Half of this time he moves from one site to another. Inc. Magazine calculated that the total costs of idleness in the United States alone amount to $544 billion.

The average person is distracted 200 times during the day. At the same time, 118 times we reach for our smartphone with our playful little hands, 52 times we are distracted by friends, relatives and colleagues, and 30 distractions are our everyday needs. For example, we suddenly become interested in how old Matt Damon is, and we drop everything and go to Wikipedia.

How to learn to concentrate

Our brain, fortunately, has such a thing as neuroplasticity. To put it simply: regular practice can change everything.

Learn something

The easiest way to improve concentration and attentiveness is to start doing something that has not been done before. For example, if you drive a car with automatic transmission gears, change to a car with a manual transmission. Use your imagination: sign up for salsa lessons, master the salmon farfalle recipe.

Fight entropy

Our brain is designed in such a way that if it sees a lack of structure somewhere, it begins to worry. He wants to find structure in everything: he needs all his tasks to be written down in a diary, so that on his computer desktop and in yours, he needs a clear daily schedule, he needs to understand what time he will be fed.

Do you know, for example, that a messy room directly affects excess weight? This makes sense: the more disorder, the more stress and entropy. So take the time to create structure in everything.

Don't forget about empathy

And one more thing that helps us concentrate. Empathy and deep, harmonious relationships with people make us more balanced and focused.

When we care about other people, we feel calm and happy. So another way to stay focused is to have a sincere desire to help other people.

What's the result?

Today it is critically important to be able to control your mind, develop it in accordance with your desires, and not with the whims of others, to be able to resist the sucking effect of the whirlpool of useless information, worthless ideas and empty chatter. Having developed within yourself the ability to be in a state that allows you not only to create new ideas, but also to bring them to reality, you will be able to control life without letting it control you.

Focus on worthwhile ideas. And truly take control of your life.

Good day, dear readers and guests of the blog.

Probably many people, including me, have faced the problem of being unable to concentrate on an important task. As soon as you sit down to do something, everything immediately distracts and interferes with you. You go to VKontakte for a second, or you want to watch one short video on YouTube and it drags on for a long time. And just a couple of hours ago you wanted to sit down quietly and work. And now you don’t want to do anything, another day has passed. You haven’t written a blog article, come up with new competitions, or haven’t written more than one page of the book you planned to write today.

And so we lose time day after day. And as we remember, time is the most valuable resource.
So what to do? How to learn to concentrate on business? How to learn to concentrate on important things? Are these the questions people ask themselves? And there are probably such people among the readers of my blog too. I asked myself such questions and one day I found answers to them in one of the blogs on the endless Internet.

As I understand it, there are many techniques, but I will tell you about two that I personally tried. One of them is called Pomodoro, it is also often called a tomato. And I called the other technique from Azamych (because I took it from books by Azamat Ushanov - “System of personal effectiveness of an Internet entrepreneur”). At their core, these systems are almost the same, but they have minor differences, which I will discuss below.

The Pomodoro technique was introduced by Francesco Cirillo in 1992. This technique was developed by him to improve personal efficiency. The essence of the technique is to learn to concentrate on important points and not be distracted by anything. It’s like we’re playing with ourselves by eating one tomato at a time.

The essence of the technique is to concentrate (focus) on one important thing.

To do this you need to follow the following rules:

• We set ourselves a task to work on
• We time ourselves for 25 minutes and work without distractions.
• Take a 5 minute break (required)
• We continue to work on the task for the next 25 minutes.
• At the end of 4 segments, we take a long break of 15-20 minutes.

In general, that's all the technology. You should eat tomatoes carefully and chew them thoroughly without being distracted by anything for 25 minutes, then rest for 5 minutes, even if you haven’t finished. Then we sit down to work on the task. And we eat the next tomato.

If you ate 4 tomatoes, rest for 15-20 minutes, completely take your mind off the task and don’t think about it. Walk around, stretch, read a book or eat something. And if the task is not finished, continue working.

This way you focus on one thing and work on it for 2 hours without distractions.

How to learn to concentrate on important matters using the Azamych method?

This method Perhaps it was invented a long time ago and it is called something else, but in this moment I called him that way because I learned him from Azamat Ushanov. The method is not much different from pomodoros, except that we work on the task for more time.

The essence of the method is exactly the same concentrate on one thing.

For this method we follow the following rules:

• Choose important task, which we will work on
• We time ourselves for 45 minutes and work without distractions.
• Rest for 15 minutes (required)
• We continue to work further, another 45 minutes.
• We work for no more than 3 periods of time.

In principle, that’s all. That is, you work on a task, usually important, about the main task, concentrated for 3 hours. Moreover, at first you work for 45 minutes, then when the time comes, you rest for 15 minutes. You are completely distracted from what you are doing.

You can do squats, do push-ups, do some exercises for your eyes, go pour yourself some tea, eat something tasty, read a couple of pages of a book, etc. Let your brain rest, and it wouldn’t hurt for you to take a break from the computer (if you work on it). Then we sit down again and work. In three hours you will complete a lot of work.

Which way to choose for concentration?

Everyone must answer this question on their own by trying each of the concentration techniques. Personally, when I had a question about how to learn to concentrate and which technique to choose for this, I tried both techniques. And I use the second technique. Somehow the tomatoes didn’t work out for me. 25 minutes is not enough for me

I am writing this article using this technique. And I do the latest articles and other important actions using this technique, because it is very convenient. You sit and work and no one distracts you. Just don’t forget to close your contact and mail, and also turn off all available instant messengers and you can put your phone on silent mode, in modern world this is relevant.

By the way, I measured all my breaks and work periods using a regular timer in my iPhone 5s, but already I ordered myself a regular one kitchen timer , and it turned out even better. Moreover, its cost is only 260 rubles (at the time of writing).

It’s very convenient and you don’t forget to take a break from work. What technology do you use to concentrate on important things? Perhaps you have your own secrets? In any case, I look forward to your techniques, advice and suggestions in the comments to this post!

And one more important point, this article is the first article from the new section “”, which will be updated as new techniques and methods appear that are designed to help people improve their working time and ability to do what is important and necessary.

In this section, I'll also write about Evernote and how to use it to organize all the information you need, as well as describe how I work with Wunderlist task setting software. Well, that’s not all, I have examples of using a regular diary for super productive work in the educational process from my cadet years

In general, be sure to subscribe to blog updates at the end of this article and you will definitely not miss anything interesting and important for yourself.

ZY By the way, if you finish work on a task earlier, you can sit down and do what you have been putting off for a long time. And then reward yourself with something