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Concentrate! How to tame a wandering mind
How to control a wandering mind
To change anything in the brain, you have to focus your attention on the task at hand. However, most find it challenging to concentrate for long periods of time without daydreaming.
Curb your wandering mind by working out the cause for the wandering. Procrastination is a psychological coping mechanism that kicks in during times of stress.
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Your brain can be changed
Neuroscience has shown that the adult brain remains malleable throughout life.
The circuits we use most often become stronger and more efficient — the ones we don't use, shrink and fade away.
How to control a wandering mind
To change anything in the brain, you have to focus your attention on the task at hand. However, most find it challenging to concentrate for long periods of time without daydreaming.
Curb your wandering mind by working out the cause for the wandering. Procrastination is a psychological coping mechanism that kicks in during times of stress.
Brain target
- The default mode network of our brain, responsible for mind-wandering and creativity, needs to be turned down when we want to work for any length of time.
- The brain's dorsal attention network - the part that helps us make decisions and focus on a task - moves into action when we are deliberately focusing on a task.
When people are less able to focus for any length of time, they are leaning more heavily on the left hemisphere of their brain, while the right hemisphere is not working as hard as it should be working.
Focus
Brain training, using magnetic brain stimulation followed by computer-based training, may help a person to focus for longer.
Brain stimulation with a weak electromagnetic pulse can turn down the left hemisphere and force a person to develop the more efficient right hemisphere and boost the powers of concentration.
Mind nudge
Your ability to pay attention is not about putting all your energy into the task - it's about allowing the brain to wander occasionally and gently refocussing.
When you get too stressed trying to focus, norepinephrine [a hormone responsible for vigilant concentration] receptors in the prefrontal cortex, shut off. It then makes trying to focus seem too hard and it makes us less able to concentrate.
The downside of adult brain training
Just like physical exercise, you have to keep training your brain to retain the benefits, or you’ll end up as before.
While research on brain training is still ongoing, mindfulness meditation may also help with continued focus. Another method to help you to focus is making a task more visually demanding. (It can be done by adding more colors or shapes to the page or increasing the number of sounds your brain has to process.)
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Our attention is fragile
Research indicates our mind wanders 50 percent of our waking hours. Internal and external distractions easily disrupt our attention from the task at hand.
To gain control over our attent...
What mindfulness is
It’s about paying attention to the present moment with awareness and without emotional reactivity.
Mindfulness training
It can be broken down into two major categories:
- Focused attention exercises cultivate your brain’s ability to focus on one single object, like one’s breath or walking.
- Open monitoring helps you learn to pay attention to what’s happening around you without becoming attached to it.
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Taking good breaks
This is important for your daily productivity. Good breaks can leave us feeling refreshed and energized. It can reduce mental fatigue, boost brain function and keep us on-task for extended periods....
The brain and goal management
The prefrontal cortex of the brain is mainly responsible for goal management. It orchestrates attention, working memory and other cognitive resources to help us get what we want.
For a challenging task, briefly taking our minds off the goal can renew and strengthen motivation. Doing activities that rely on different brain regions is best to restore focus.
Going Natural
Exposure to nature restores the mind. One study showed better working memory scores for people after a walk in a natural environment, but not in an urban setting.
If you are unable to go into nature, find plants, fresh air or a fish tank. Sit down, take a deep breath, and notice the details of nature. Research shows that even looking at some pictures of nature can work.
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The Importance Of Boredom
It drives us to engage in activities that we find more meaningful than those at hand. Without it, we’d be perpetually excited by everything.
Research shows that people who are bored...
Focus And The Brain
When we’re consciously doing things we’re using the “executive attention network, ” the parts of the brain that control and inhibit our attention. The attention network makes it possible for us to relate directly to the world presently around us.
By contrast, when our minds wander, we activate the brain’s “default mode network, ” which is the brain “at rest”; not focused on an external, goal-oriented task. In this mode, we still tap about 95% of the energy we use when our brains are engaged in focused thinking.
Types Of Daydreaming
- Poor attention control: when people with poor attention control drift into daydreaming. These people are anxious, easily distracted, and have difficulty concentrating, even on their daydreams.
- Guilty-dysphoric: when our thoughts drift to unproductive and negative places. We berate ourselves for perceived mistakes or flaws and feel emotions like guilt, anxiety, and anger.
- Positive-constructive: when our thoughts veer toward the imaginative; it reflects our drive to explore ideas and feelings, plan, and problem-solve.
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