#Focus get fit stay full be focused how to#
#Focus get fit stay full be focused series#

Likewise, if your attention span is currently quite flabby, it’s best to slowly build up the weight you ask it to lift. If you decide you want to physically get in shape, but are starting at ground zero, the worst thing you can do is to throw yourself into an extreme training program – you’ll end up injured, discouraged, or both, and you’ll quit before you even really get started. Increase the strength of your focus gradually. Below we outline exercises that will beef up your focus so that you can start lifting heavier and heavier cognitive loads.ġ. Your mind muscles, just like your physical muscles, need resistance they need challenges that stretch their limits and in so doing, grow their focus fibers. You’ll never get big muscles from sitting on the couch all day, and you’ll never develop amazing powers of concentration from exclusively reading Buzzfeed and watching Tosh.O. Your Concentration Training Program: 11 Exercises That Will Strengthen Your Attention Below, you’ll find your brain’s workout plan. We’re going to hit the mental gym and turn your focus into a beast. So put on your lifting belt and chalk up your cranium. Gaining strength in either area is ultimately about eating right, getting ample sleep, and engaging in challenging daily exercise.

#Focus get fit stay full be focused how to#

In both cases, if you tell yourself to dig deeper, you’ll be surprised how much more strength and focus you actually have left in the tank.Īnd while everyone’s looking for cool new “secrets” for how to build both their body and mind – shortcuts and hacks heretofore undiscovered – the truth is that strengthening our physical and mental muscles comes down to plain, good old fashioned, highly unsexy work. Just as you can hit a wall in a tough workout where you think you can’t do one more rep, in the middle of reading a long article your mind will want to quit and surf to another tab. You get the same feeling of internal dread/doubt right before you begin an intense workout – the one that says “I’m not sure I want to do this” – as you do right before you decide whether or not you’re going to read a long article, and in both cases, you have to set your mind, bite down, and get going with it. Your physical muscles and your attention “muscles” both have a limited amount of strength at any given time, their stamina and power can either atrophy from inactivity or strengthen from vigorous, purposeful exercise, and they require rest and recovery after they’ve been intensely exerted. The parallels between strengthening your body and strengthening your mind are in fact so close that it’s really not so much an analogy as a description of reality. Last time we used the analogy of being the supreme commander of your mind to explain attention management when it comes to attention strengthening, we’d encourage you to think of your mind as a muscle. If you have a goal to learn and understand as much about the world as you possibly can before you die, strengthening your power of concentration is not an option, it’s a necessity. The man with an iron-clad focus can do both he is the boat captain and the pearl diver and the world is truly his oyster. A man with a scatter-shot attention span will only be able to experience one plane of existence he can skim across the surface of the world’s vast knowledge and wisdom but is unable to dive deeper and discover the treasures below. Research has shown that individuals who can sustain their attention for long periods of time perform better on all sorts of cognitive challenges than those who cannot. But good management can only get you so far to win the war on distraction, the absolute strength of your voluntary attention - your focus foot soldiers – greatly matters. Yesterday we compared managing your different kinds of attention to being the supreme commander of your mind – you must be able to deftly maneuver and deploy your units to various battles.

#Focus get fit stay full be focused series#

In this series on mastering your attention, we have emphasized the fact that attention is not just the ability to focus on a single task without being distracted, but in fact, is comprised of several different elements that must be effectively managed.īut this doesn’t mean that single-minded focus is not of paramount importance.