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Distraction: the companion whom we try hard to get rid of while doing our intended task. Its chasing powers are intense. Let me put it this way, “Traction of distractions is sometimes irrefutable potent, that we just flow with it and lose are intended traction.”

We use these phrases immeasurable times while trying to finish what we intend to do, “Please don’t disturb me, let me focus”, “There are so many distractions around me, it’s hard to finish my work”. When I was in college, a couple of my friends used to go to the hostel’s roof or corridors, basically somewhere quiet to have their studies done. Whereas there was a fair amount of my friends who could easily study with a lot of noise around. The same hostel and the same age group have different minds and concentration levels. I used to say, some of them have a hidden antenna attached somewhere that was capturing the study frequency and filtering all the noise frequency out. Their hidden antenna was strong enough to filter all the noises out, irrespective of the decibels!

That antenna was none other than our dear companion, hard to get hold of – “Focus”. My mind used to wonder how some of us could achieve such a remarkable level of focus and some of us get distracted even with a whisper.

We have distractions all around us – multitasking mindsets, technological distractions, environmental noise, conversational distractions, social media distractions, transportation distractions, our inner thoughts, etc., etc. You can add a few more to this list. Over the years the list of distractions is growing and so is our struggle to focus.

Can we imagine a distraction-free life? I believe no, it will be a dream to think that way. We will have this companion around us, and it will try to attract us with its mighty in numerous ways.

Let’s just take a simple scenario, we are trying to finish our project. Just to take a few examples of distractions, “Messages on our cell phone or emails popping up– social media distraction. Today is the last day to update the version of our system – technological distraction. Our friend is calling us after a long time – social distraction. We need to reply to an urgent email plus we are invited for a random “unavoidable” meeting plus we need to help our colleague with some high severity issue – multitasking mindsets, everything is apparently an equal priority for us, and we are thinking to do everything together, not to forget this all need to be done along with our project! We are thinking hard about ways to wrap up everything on time, we are thinking when we will get time to go on a vacation, why we cannot have a better work-life balance – inner thoughts “Inner distractions”.

Above is the simple scenario, that happens to most of us. It reminds me of the old saying that our parents used to say when we were young kids, “Choose your friends wisely!” Likewise, choose the companion here wisely. This journey is to ignore the easily accessible but unimportant companion: Distraction, and get hold of what matters most and help us on the track: Focus.

So far, we have been talking about the various examples of our everyday distractions, but what exactly is a distraction?

Distraction is a stimulus or task that draws attention away from the task of our primary interest.

I think for better understanding we can further divide the state of distraction into 3 phases – 1. Notification: notification that interrupts our current attention e.g. messages, noise, thought, etc., 2. Drive: We have the urge to follow the notification e.g. we pick up our phone, or we stop working on our project to process the thought – let’s say thought of going on vacation, etc., 3. Involvement: In this phase, our attention is entirely drawn by other tasks and we are completely involved in doing that e.g. we are busy replying to all the messages, or we start planning for our vacation (start executing our thought!).

If we look at the definition of a distraction, we will have the answer of avoiding distractions there. Notification, drive, and involvement – we need to work on our inner strength, phase by phase. It is difficult to not notice when our phone buzzes, our urges drive us towards checking our emails. Forget about email/ message/ call or an in-person conversation, how about a thought? Urge to follow your thought. Urges! Difficult but surely possible to control. It will require absorption and deep involvement with our primary task.

The journey from distraction to focus won’t be complete if we don’t talk about how to control our urges to follow the notification. There could be a couple of ways of practicing that, such as:

• We can set a defined time to check on our notifications.
• It’s been noticed that we follow our urges to check on notifications or check apps or games when we sit idle for a few moments in between working. Deliberately we can replace that idle time with more fruitful time. Let’s say walk to get some water or plan to give more thought to the project. We can substitute that idle time with anything that helps our mind-body stay connected to the intended task.
• Improve focus.

How to improve our focus?

This is our companion that lies within us but is still difficult to get hold of. Before we get to the ways to improve our dear focus, let’s catch up on what factors are affecting our focus.

This is the age of information. We have information overloaded, rather bombarded from all different sources upon us. It affects our brain’s filtering system. There is a lot of information that we feed to this brain, intentionally and unintentionally. It affects our concentration level. An unhealthy lifestyle, stress, lack of sleep, unhealthy eating and drinking habits, effects of medications, underlying health conditions, etc. are a few factors that impact our focus.

According to Harward Health Publishing, APA, and research studies, below are some strategies to improve focus:

1. Practice Mindfulness: Practice mindfulness means to live in the moment to the present, rather than dwelling on the past or thinking about the future. This is attainable through meditation. There has been growing research on mindfulness, not just in psychology but also in neuroscience. The research shows that in a process of daily meditation, we focus on our brain’s prefrontal cortex which rewires our brain and helps improve our focus.  
2. Healthy Lifestyle: Better sleep, daily exercise, healthy eating, and drinking habits helps improve concentration levels.
3. Spend some time with nature: According to APA spending time with nature helps our mental and physical health.
4. Avoid multitasking: According to the research, while we think we are multitasking, we are moreover switching rapidly from one task to another, resulting in poor concentration levels at every task. Thus, it is good to prioritize the work and avoid multitasking to attain better focus.
5. Concentration puzzles/activities: These are activities that require our full attention for a given period. For example, a challenge to read a book for say 30 minutes, if, in those 30 minutes, we check our phones, or get distracted by any notification then restart the timer again. Another example could be doodling for 15 minutes, playing sudoku, or some other fun activity. The point is to challenge ourselves not to drive towards distractions for that assigned period.
6. Cognitive Training: Some computerized cognitive games improve response time and concentration levels. Though, the effectiveness of this strategy is debatable.

The transition from a life affected by every distraction to a more focused one is difficult but attainable, only if we put our minds to it and have a deeper involvement in every task.

As Buddha said, “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” – Buddha

Thanks

Mridulika