If you read the book 'The Power of Full Engagement' by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz you will learn how focus and concentration improve memory.The authors of the book state that the biggest challenge of modern age, where we are faced with many things to do everyday is not on how to manage time, but on how we manage ourselves and our time.Steven Covey, author of the book 'The seven habits of highly effective people' totally agrees with this concept and one of his quotes goes like this. Time management is a misconception.It's managing ourselves what makes the difference'.Both authors have spent time doing research about how we human perform, and more importantly how the most productive and effective people perform.One of the things that very often shows up in top performing people, whether it is sport or business or anything, is their ability to put themselves consciously in the state called 'flow'.This state is characterized by total focus, concentration of energies both physical, emotional and mental on one single task at a time.It's not a chance that the biggest inventions and masterpieces have all been created by people who were in this particular state in that moment.And I bet that if you try to think about the best things you achieved were all during this state, whether you were conscious about it or not.Unfortunately, modern society wants us to do many things simultaneously and this is very damaging for our brain and productivity, let alone memory.In fact, as it's known that focus and concentration improve memory, it has also been discovered that multitasking damaged our brain very seriously.I bet that when you were at school doing exams, you were totally engaged and focused on that single task and that brought the good results and therefore the good graded, hopefully.This is common sense and everyone can relate to that.However, when we enter the market place and we are asked to perform in more competitive environment, where more concentration is required, in some places multitasking is the norm.This doesn't make sense, specially because in these environments more responsibilities are involved therefore more focus should be allowed.I know that for many realities this is the norm and it would require too big efforts to change things.Having said this, though, the more we can design our work environment to be focused while we perform tasks, the better it is.Studies have demonstrated that when someone gets distracted by someone else while he's working on something, when the interruption is finished it can take up to twenty minutes for him to get back on the task with the same focus he had at the beginning.So just think this. someone starts doing something, then the phone rings and he answers.Then it takes fifteen minutes to focus again.He gets back to the task and an email alert pops up.He answer the email and after ten minutes he's ready to continue the work he was doing.This way a single task that should have taken thirty minutes ends up taking three hours due to these interruption.I bet you will think twice before knocking on someone else's office while he's busy doing something.Focusing on single tasks for blocks of forty five to fifty minutes can provide benefits to the productivity and brain as well.So I do encourage you to avoid multitasking and after I have showed you how focus and concentration improve memory, use them as much as possible in your work environment.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Focus and Concentration Improve Memory
If you read the book 'The Power of Full Engagement' by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz you will learn how focus and concentration improve memory.The authors of the book state that the biggest challenge of modern age, where we are faced with many things to do everyday is not on how to manage time, but on how we manage ourselves and our time.Steven Covey, author of the book 'The seven habits of highly effective people' totally agrees with this concept and one of his quotes goes like this. Time management is a misconception.It's managing ourselves what makes the difference'.Both authors have spent time doing research about how we human perform, and more importantly how the most productive and effective people perform.One of the things that very often shows up in top performing people, whether it is sport or business or anything, is their ability to put themselves consciously in the state called 'flow'.This state is characterized by total focus, concentration of energies both physical, emotional and mental on one single task at a time.It's not a chance that the biggest inventions and masterpieces have all been created by people who were in this particular state in that moment.And I bet that if you try to think about the best things you achieved were all during this state, whether you were conscious about it or not.Unfortunately, modern society wants us to do many things simultaneously and this is very damaging for our brain and productivity, let alone memory.In fact, as it's known that focus and concentration improve memory, it has also been discovered that multitasking damaged our brain very seriously.I bet that when you were at school doing exams, you were totally engaged and focused on that single task and that brought the good results and therefore the good graded, hopefully.This is common sense and everyone can relate to that.However, when we enter the market place and we are asked to perform in more competitive environment, where more concentration is required, in some places multitasking is the norm.This doesn't make sense, specially because in these environments more responsibilities are involved therefore more focus should be allowed.I know that for many realities this is the norm and it would require too big efforts to change things.Having said this, though, the more we can design our work environment to be focused while we perform tasks, the better it is.Studies have demonstrated that when someone gets distracted by someone else while he's working on something, when the interruption is finished it can take up to twenty minutes for him to get back on the task with the same focus he had at the beginning.So just think this. someone starts doing something, then the phone rings and he answers.Then it takes fifteen minutes to focus again.He gets back to the task and an email alert pops up.He answer the email and after ten minutes he's ready to continue the work he was doing.This way a single task that should have taken thirty minutes ends up taking three hours due to these interruption.I bet you will think twice before knocking on someone else's office while he's busy doing something.Focusing on single tasks for blocks of forty five to fifty minutes can provide benefits to the productivity and brain as well.So I do encourage you to avoid multitasking and after I have showed you how focus and concentration improve memory, use them as much as possible in your work environment.
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