Have we forgotten how to concentrate?

Fleur Britten: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/mental_health/article7096165.ece

“The ability to concentrate is the X factor,” says Griffey, whose book, promisingly subtitled Enhance Focus, Reduce Stress and Achieve More, unpacks all the latest science (plus Buddhist thinking) on focus. She points out that we are experts at “sabotaging, daydreaming and distraction”. Thirty per cent of the time, we don’t think about what we’re doing. Even the brainiac Alain de Botton struggles. “The constant thrill the internet can deliver is hard to challenge,” he admits. “I don’t manage much work while ostensibly at work.”

We are our own worst enemies, says Griffey. We develop avoidance strategies, instinctively seeking the path of least resistance to binge on virtual comfort food. Yet it takes, on average, 15 minutes to refocus after an interruption. Email is addictive because it brings reward: an invitation, a joke, some attention — simple lab-rat science. If I ate food, say, like I checked my digital portals, I’d think I had a serious problem.

Griffey says we can all concentrate well and do the job once. Concentration leads to success. We’d leave work earlier. We’d also get more out of food, music, people, flat-pack furniture, everything. But avoidance, negative thinking and digital dependence are formed habits, so stopping them takes discipline.
There could be longer-term implications. De Botton argues that a lack of concentration is affecting our ability to be alone and unstimulated, and it could make us stupid. While scientists know our behaviour is changing, they don’t know how that affects our neural structure. We must relearn how to concentrate, says De Botton, who has all but banned his children from computers.
If we want results, we need to “single-task”, says Ferriss, finishing one task before starting another, and resisting instant gratification. “Lots of people say they’d love to write a book,” says Griffey. “I say, you can. You just need to concentrate for long enough.” It’s time to start paying attention to paying attention.

PAY ATTENTION NOW
Practice the five-more rule Force yourself to read for five more minutes, write for five more minutes or learn five more things before getting distracted.
Exercise Mental activities such as sudoku and memory games promote agility. Try meditation, t’ai chi and yoga.
Rest Relax constructively: sports, games and hobbies are good; television is not. Twenty-minute naps refresh the brain.
Be cyber-savvy Only check your emails once an hour and turn off any alerts.
Go rustic Urban settings put you on high alert. If you can’t take a country walk, take lunch in the park.
Know yourself Find your chronotype (are you an owl or a lark?), so you can work when you’re most alert.
Prepare Envisage your desired outcome (as golfers do); keep a notepad to hand to record other thoughts and focus on the task.
Don't try harder, try differently To beat a mental block, pique your interest — tweak your imagination, find your hook.

Thinking Like A Farmer

Written by Jim Rohn

Posted: August 29, 2009

One of the difficulties we face in our industrialized age is the fact we’ve lost our sense of seasons. Unlike the farmer whose priorities change with the seasons, we have become impervious to the natural rhythm of life. As a result, we have our priorities out of balance. Let me illustrate what I mean:

For a farmer, springtime is his most active time. It’s then when he must work around the clock, up before the sun and still toiling at the stroke of midnight. He must keep his equipment running at full capacity because he has but a small window of time for the planting of his crop. Eventually winter comes when there is less for him to do to keep him busy.

There is a lesson here. Learn to use the seasons of life. Decide when to pour it on and when to ease back, when to take advantage and when to let things ride. It’s easy to keep going from nine to five year in and year out and lose a natural sense of priorities and cycles. Don’t let one year blend into another in a seemingly endless parade of tasks and responsibilities. Keep your eye on your own seasons, lest you lose sight of value and substance.

Oxford Word of the Year 2009: Unfriend

Birds are singing, the sun is shining and I am joyful first thing in the morning without caffeine. Why you ask? Because it is Word of the Year time (or WOTY as we refer to it around the office). Every year the New Oxford American Dictionary prepares for the holidays by making its biggest announcement of the year. This announcement is usually applauded by some and derided by others and the ongoing conversation it sparks is always a lot of fun, so I encourage you to let us know what you think in the comments.

Without further ado, the 2009 Word of the Year is: unfriend.

unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

As in, “I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.”

“It has both currency and potential longevity,” notes Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford’s US dictionary program. “In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year. Most “un-” prefixed words are adjectives (unacceptable, unpleasant), and there are certainly some familiar “un-” verbs (uncap, unpack), but “unfriend” is different from the norm. It assumes a verb sense of “friend” that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!). Unfriend has real lex-appeal.”

http://blog.oup.com/2009/11/unfriend/

David Allen: How to Cope without your Autopilot

Recent research has validated what to most of us is an intuitive truth: thinking is hard. It's unnatural, abnormal. Our brain's ability to figure out very complicated stuff, such as walking, talking and driving, is almost beyond comprehension. But it's actually programmed to stop thinking about those behaviours as soon as possible. It's crying out: "Help! Get this pattern on to cruise control, please! Don't make me keep having to rethink how to tie my shoelaces, brush my teeth or navigate through this traffic. Can we just figure that out as quickly as possible and then put it to rest, for ever?!"

Our whole neurology is wired to automate that process as soon as we can, and it does that extremely well. The vast majority of our brain is dedicated to functional learning and physiological- habit implementation.

But, in order to know what to do with that friggin' email staring you in the face, cruise control won't cut it. There's nothing to put on automatic that you can trust to deal with it. You have to think - again. What the heck is this? Who is it from? Why did they send this to me? What are they asking me to do, if anything? What does this input mean to me, in terms of my commitments in my life? What am I going to do about it? And, oh yeah, how does this relate to all the other things that I'm already committed to?

Welcome to the existential angst of knowledge work, and the source of the greatest volume of stress in today's world: the lack of clear decision-making on the front end about what things mean to me that I have let into my psychic space, and therefore what I need to make happen about them. Emails don't have attached notes that say, "By accepting this email from your sister, you must now determine what, exactly, you are going to commit to regarding your mother's upcoming birthday and what and who needs to take the next action on it."

It would be challenging enough with the volume of such things showing up just to juggle all the outcomes you've identified to achieve and all the required actions to move them to completion. But the primary task is to make those decisions in the first place. What are you committed to finish? And what do you need to do to start the process to make that happen?

Here's a big rub: there's no one on your team. No matter how close you think you are to your life partner or your business cohorts, they're all preoccupied with figuring out what the heck to do with the last email you (or their boss or their sister) sent them, much less a resource available to you to figure out the work that you need to define. And they're absolutely no help, right now, in making it any easier for you to clarify and parse what to do, if anything, about the last communication you got from them.

The front-loaded requirement of assessing the nature of any and all of your inputs, and your relationship to them, is a big job. And it's yours alone.

That's why there are papers, notebooks of notes, emails amassing over the ridge, and a cacophony of thoughts in your mind. To know what to do with them and where they should land, you have to decide what they mean to you. And their meaning is not self-evident - you have to think. Applying focus is required in order to achieve a state of mind unencumbered with psychic dross. It's hard to be available for creativity and the unexpected when you're laden with those internal open loops.

What if you could build in an automated process of how to deal with unclarified "stuff" that shows up? Exactly in the same way you have built in the responses to dirty dishes or an unexpected detour on your journey? It's possible, but it requires approaching your thinking and decision-making behaviours as systematic and repeatable, as if those are mundane commodity practices. It's possible, but it's unnatural. Like driving.

Wired UK, November 2009

Apology

My words are few
My words are scarce
But when I speak
I often turn into an arse.

How can I apologise
And win back your heart
When I feel cold like ice
And unable to play my part?

Yet these are all excuses
When I see the bruises
My wicked words have caused
I must stop to think and pause.

You deserve better
Than all I can muster
You deserve my love too
And love you I do.

Hence this poem;
Though it still be mere words —
But I hope to repair the mayhem
Caused by my tongue’s slur.

I’m sorry for being an obstinate wall
I’m sorry for causing every brawl
I’m sorry for reacting stoically
I’m sorry I let you down so badly.

I hope You’ll still love me
Though I’m still insane — but surely improving
For in my heart I know I see
That I love you, oh so faithfully.

Manglish- Urban Dictionary

1.	manglish	51 up, 16 down
	Colloquial version of the English language as spoken in Malaysia and it is a portmanteau of the word Malay and English. The language shares substantial linguistic similarities with Singlish in Singapore. In real essence, Manglish and Singlish are one and the same although there are a few slang words that exist in one and not in another. For all practical purposes, Manglish and Singlish are subsets of the same group. Theoretically, English as spoken in Malaysia is based on British English and called Malaysian English. British spelling is generally followed. However, the influence of American English modes of expression and slang is strong, particularly among Malaysian youth. Since 1968, Malay, or Bahasa Melayu, has been the country's sole official language. While English is widely used, many Malay words have become part of common usage in informal English or Manglish (also means Mangled English). An example is suffixing sentences with lah, e.g. "Don't be so worried-lah", which is usually used to present a sentence as rather light-going and not so serious, the suffix has no specific meaning. Although Chinese dialects also make abundant use of the suffix lah and there is some disagreement as to which language it was originally borrowed from. There is also a strong influence from Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, and Tamil, which are other major dialects and languages spoken in Malaysia. Manglish also uses some anachronistic British terms from the era of British colonization (see "gostan" and "outstation" below). {source: wikipedia} Manglish Particles: 1. "lah" - Often used at the end of sentences, used to affirm a statement (similar to 'of course'), usually ends with an exclamation mark. Eg. "Don't be an idiot lah!" 2. "mah" - Used at the end of sentences, used to affirm a sentence, but not as strongly as "lah". Eg. "She's like that mah.." 3. "nah" - Derived from the Malay expression, "Nah!". Used when giving something to another person. Eg. "Nah, take this!" 4. "meh" - Used when asking a question, especially when one is skeptical of something. Eg. "Really meh?" 5. "liao" - Means 'already'. Eg. "No more liao." 6. "ah" - Used at the end of sentences, unlike 'meh' the question is rhetorical. Eg. "Why is he like that ah?" Can also be used to when asking a genuine question. Eg. "Is that true ah?" Besides that, some people use it when referring to a subject before making a comment (often used to make a negative comment). Eg. "My brother ah, always disturb me!" 7. "lor" - Used when explaining something. Eg. "Like that lor!" 8. "leh" - Used to soften an order, making it less harsh. Eg. "Give me that leh." 9. "one" - Used as an emphasis at the end of a sentence. Eg. "Why is he so naughty one?" 10. "what" - Unlike the British/Americans, the word 'what' is often used as an exclamation mark, not just to ask a question. Eg. "What! How could you do that?" 11. "got" - Used as a literal translation from the Malay word 'ada'. The arrangement of words are often also literally translated. Eg. "You got anything to do?" ("Kamu ada apa-apa nak buat?"). This particular particle is widely abused in Manglish, mainly because of the difficulty for the Manglish speaker of comprehending the various correct uses of the English verb 'to have'. Therefore, 'got' is substituted for every tense of the verb. Eg. "I got already/got/will got my car from the garage." Manglish nouns: 1. "barsket" - derived from 'bastard', general derogatory term. May also be derived from 'basket case' 2. "bladibarsket" - derived from 'bloody bastard', profane derogatory term 3. "kapster" - a talkative person 4. "maluation" - embarrassment, from "malu" + "-ation" 5. "outstation" - out of town (i.e, going outstation) Manglish adjectives: 1. "aiksy" - arrogant, overconfident. Possibly derived from 'acting up' 2. "blur" - confused, out of it Manglish verbs: 1. "gostan" - reverse a vehicle (apparently from the nautical term "go astern") 2. "jadi" - happened, succeeded (derived from the Malay word 'jadi', and may sometimes mean 'so' as in, So what?) 3. "jalan" - to walk 4. "kena" - to get caught, to get punished; often used like a noun ("I sure kena if I cheat") 5. "kantoi" - to get caught 6. "cabut/cantas" - to run off, flee or to escape ('Cabut' is a Malay word meaning to pull or pulling out) 7. "makan" - to eat 8. "on/off" - to activate/deactivate something, respectively 9. "pengsan" - to faint 10. "pon" - to skip school (from "ponteng", meaning the same) 11. "saman" - to issue a traffic ticket, from summons 12. "tahan" - to stand, to bear ("Cannot tahan her perfume! So strong!") 13. "tumpang-ing" - riding in someone else's vehicle or lodging at someone else's house, from the Malay verb "tumpang" + "-ing" "any Malay word + ing" - doing a certain action ('Tengah makan' or 'I'm eating right now' is shortened to 'Makan-ing') Manglish exclamations: 1. "best" - indicates the object as superlatively good 2. "die/finish/gone/habis/mampus" - generic exclamations to indicate trouble, used like the English 'damn it' Manglish grammar: "(Subject + predicate), is it?" - this is often used as a question. "It" doesn't refer to the subject, but rather to the entire preceding clause ("Is it so?") {source: wikipedia}

David Allen: How to make space to think

Everyone who hires me as a productivity coach is after the same thing, and it's something I can't really give them. They want more room. Not physical "room" – they've got plenty of that. They need room to think – to create, to plan, to tackle problems, to engage with other people with a more elevated level of focus and attention.

It's a common issue for productive people operating in high-octane environments. I'm not referring to full-time writers, public commentators or philosophers. In these professions, creative thinking is an obvious necessity, and they make space for it. Though the process may at times be difficult, it's an accepted part of these professions.

Rather, I'm talking about the majority of people who, though they are often called "knowledge workers", don't have in their job descriptions a clear delineation of the responsibility to think. They need to be leaders, managers and smart contributors. And most have added to that the personal job responsibilities of being a terrific partner, a great parent and a good person. But to perform any of these roles at a level that's acceptable to them, they have to think.

But it's hardly ever said that we actually need time, energy and an environment to do this. I suppose it's because to get a diploma or a job we have to demonstrate we can think; and that we've already done an amorphously sufficient amount, so why bother thinking that we need to build in room to think?

This issue is often associated with "time management". If thinking requires time, then I need to carve it out so that I have sufficient hours in an environment that is conducive to problem-solving or inspired expression. A noble objective, but the phrase "carve out time" is indicative of how difficult that can be. It hints at undergoing major surgery to our temporal existence.

But what I've discovered is that, yes, even though blocking time in the day to engage in the creative process is often required, there's a more fundamental way to get the room: clear your head. It's psychic-space management.

There could be some Einsteinian principle at work that allows our cogitative room to become larger to expand that mental function from a tiny cubicle into a giant warehouse. But my experience is that cogitative space grows more by getting rid of things than by adding capacity.

When it's time to move house, what do you do? Go through old stuff; decide what's still useful and what's not. You visualise the new space and what from your past will fit and what needs to be got rid of.

So, can you do the same thing with your psyche? Thoughts seem to come and go of their own accord. But you can stop rethinking the same ones, and you can stop the static and distractions that overwhelm the creative mental process. How? By paying attention to what has your attention , and finishing your thinking about it. You must first recognise what you're thinking about ("buy cat food", "I hate this rattle in my car"). You then need to decide what you need to do next to deal with it; and then park the results of that thinking in a way that your mind trusts you will engage with it later.

People who actually start to do this report huge increases in their ability to think, in and between their daily comings and goings. They don't ultimately expand their space. They just get to play around in it with a lot more freedom.

Wired UK, October 2009