The main barriers to concentrating are boredom, anxiety and day-dreaming. We need to counteract these barriers. The following three skills are basic to concentration: if you want to improve your concentration, start by practising them. They will be followed by further strategies which will allow you to build onto the basic skills.
1. STOP!!!
This sounds very simple, but it works. When you notice your thoughts wandering, say to yourself STOP and then gently bring your attention back to where you want it to be. Each time it wanders bring it back. To begin with, this could be several times a minute. But each time, say STOP and then re-focus. Don't waste energy trying to keep thoughts out of your mind (forbidden thoughts attract like a magnet!), just put the effort into STOP and re-focus.
To begin with you will do this hundreds of times a week. But you will find that the period of time between your straying thoughts gets a little longer each day, so be patient and keep at it.
2. Attending
This is about maintaining concentration and not giving in to distractions. It could be described as a sort of tunnel-vision, or as being focused: you keep your concentration on what is in front of you. If you are distracted, use the STOP technique to regain concentration. You can practice attending in many situations:
eg. in a lecture, if people move or cough, ignore them, don't look at them, actively exclude them from the link or tunnel formed between you and the lecturer.
eg. in a social situation, keep your attention solely on one person - what they say, how they look etc. - and ignore what is going on round about.
3. Worry time
Set aside one or more specific periods in the day when you are allowed to worry. It can help to set them just before something that you know you will do, to ensure that you stop worrying on time - e.g. before a favourite TV programme, or a meal-time. Whenever an anxiety or distracting thought enters your mind during the day, banish it until your next worry time, and re-focus on to what you are supposed to be doing. Some people find it helpful to write down the banished thought: it is easier to banish a thought if you are sure you won't have forgotten it when you get to your worry time. It is important that you keep your worry time(s), and make yourself worry for the full time. If you find that you can't fill the time available, then make a conscious decision to reduce it.
You may notice, particularly if you keep a list, that certain things keep reappearing: this is a fairly clear indication that you need to do something about them.
4. Active Learning
Everyone has their own distinct learning style. Some learn by reading and then asking themselves questions, others learn by making condensed notes and memorising them, others learn by the associations they make to the material, and yet others retain a pictorial image of the material. Once you know your learning style, organise the material to suit it: if you don't, learning will be more of a struggle than it need be and your concentration will suffer. Having your own learning style involves having your own internal 'language': briefly, this means the words you use to translate and understand the material so that it has meaning for you. If you don't know how you learn best, try to analyse your experience either with someone who knows how you work, or with someone with expertise in this area.
Good Luck!
Source: Internet
Answered by
Usha P
, an ibibo Specialist,
at
4:51 PM on March 03, 2008
