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.

Snippet from Down Under- Bill Bryson

Flying into Australia, I realized with a sigh that I had forgotten again who their Prime Minister is. I am forever doing this with the Australian PM - committing the name to memory, forgetting it (generally more or less instantly), then feeling terribly guilty. My thinking is that there ought to be one person outside Australia who knows.

But then Australia is such a difficult country to keep track of. On my first visit, some years ago, I passed the time on the long flight from London reading a history of Australian politics in the twentieth century, wherein I encountered the startling fact that in 1967 the Prime Minister, Harold Holt, was strolling along a beach in Victoria when he plunged into the surf and vanished. No trace of the poor man was ever seen again. This seemed doubly astounding to me - first that Australia could just lose a Prime Minister (I mean, come on) and second that news of this had never reached me.

Wednesday is the most miserable day of the week- Telegraph.co.uk

Professors Christopher Danforth and Peter Dodds, of Vermont University, analysed words used in 2.4 million internet blogs such as Twitter, giving a score out of nine depending on how positive they were.

Words like free, fun, and rainbow all scored above eight, while words such as betray, cruel, hatred and suffocate all scored less than two.

Saturday and Sunday rated predictably well but, perhaps surprisingly, Monday came out as the second happiest day of the week, partly because people were still reminiscing about the weekend. However by Wednesday, these feelings had subsided.

Professor Danforth said: "People's daily experience is being reflected somewhat in what they're saying. And this is more of a story, we think, for Twitter messages, which we've just started to pay attention to, about a year ago.

"They think they are communicating with friends, but since blogs are public we're just looking over their shoulders.

"The weekends tend to be fairly happy and Wednesday turned out to be the saddest day."

He said using the internet in this way enabled them to rate happiness based on higher numbers of people than previous studies.

"What we're attempting to do is measure collective happiness on a much larger scale, similar to measuring the temperature outside," Professor Danforth said.

"The energy of a few molecules bouncing around doesn't give a good indication of heat, you need billions or more."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6075132/Wednesday-is-the-most-miserable-day-of-the-week-claim-researchers.html

Snippet from Wired Mag, UK (Aug 2009)

You probably know your hourly rate at work, but what about the rest of your time, the time spent not doing work: shopping, queueing, waiting on the phone, eating lunch, watching TV, drinking in the pub? Paul McCrudden decided his every minute was worth money, and set out to reclaim it from every company he spent time with over a six-week period this summer.

Between June 15 and July 31, McCrudden used Daytum to record how he spent his time. Then he wrote letters and invoices to all the brands he’d encountered, arguing that they should pay him because his patronage is valuable to them:

“My time on this planet is valuable to me. But more importantly, my time is valuable to you. In our attention economy, my presence in your café helps your company in a number of ways. For example, it attracts other customers to you because they see that your brand is popular – especially so with an ABC1 male (or however you’d define me these days.) And it means I’m not spending time with your competitors. My attention and time in your café ultimately helps your bottom line and market position.”

McCrudden charged his time at a rate of £102 per hour, but offered companies a 75 per cent discount on that rate (“as I appreciate that my time is not spent in the same way as it is with my employer”). He invoiced 50 companies, asking Transport for London for £531.25, Sainsbury’s for £97.95 and the Killers for £178.50, for his attendance at their Hyde Park Concert.

Amazingly, Pret A Manger responded by not only paying his invoice, but also adding £22 to cover the price of his lunches, a nominal amount to cover interest, and even an extra £1 to cover the inconvenience of having to walk to the post box. Other companies to respond include Boots, whose customer care department said they thought their Advantage Card points were enough of a reward for their customers’ time, and Cranberry, whose managing director sent McCrudden an invoice of his own to cover the time spent reading his letter and website.

- Sarah Dobbs-

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2009-08/19/how-much-is-your-time-worth.aspx

'Busted'!

At Duke University, two students had received A's in chemistry all semester. But on the night before the final exam, they were partying in another state and didn't get back to Duke until it was over. Their excuse to the professor was that they had a flat tire, and they asked if they could take a make-up test. The professor agreed, wrote out a test, and sent the two to separate rooms to take it. The first question was worth five points. Then they flipped the paper over and found the second question, worth 95 points:"which tire was it?"

- quoted from Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard's Walk

Snippet from Wired Magazine, September 2009

*Click to enlarge