Experts named ways to increase concentration

The ability to pay attention can be trained, Daniel Smilek, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, told The New York Times. He and other experts told reporters about three steps to help regain focus.

First of all, it’s worth observing yourself while performing tasks, says Smilek. You need to pay attention to moments of distraction from the task and see what they were connected with.

In addition, the professor advised drawing up a graph of your attention rhythm - natural peaks and valleys of concentration. To do this, you need to check yourself every hour and analyze your concentration, advised computer science professor at the University of California at Irvine Gloria Mark.

If you manage to hold out like this for a day, you can try to repeat the same thing over the next few days, up to a week, added Jay Olson, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the University of Toronto. The result of such an experiment will be a rough idea of ​​the frequency of distractions, a short list of common causes of distraction, and an understanding of when concentration is strongest.

The next, second step is reducing the number of distractions. These can be either radical measures, for example, replacing a smartphone with a push-button phone, or more gradual methods. Dr. Olson advised turning off facial or fingerprint recognition on devices, and turning off autofill for passwords on social media.

Additionally, Olson says, sometimes the urge to check your smartphone signals that your brain needs a real break. In this case, you can provide it to yourself. Unlike distraction, a break for lunch, yoga, or anything else has a time limit.

Using the information about your attention gained after taking the first step, you can pre-schedule complex tasks for moments when it's easiest to concentrate, said Kostadin Kushlev, a psychologist at Georgetown University.

A week after implementing these changes, it is worth checking your concentration again. If it is still not at the level you wanted, you can move on to more drastic measures. To begin with, you should give your brain a break from excessive stimulation, after which you should gradually increase the load, said Professor Mark.

In order for your brain to rest and replenish its resources for concentrating, you can try to eat without gadgets, leave your headphones at home, and also add a reboot in nature.

Dr. Smilek told reporters how to train attention in the third step. According to him, while performing any task it is worth concentrating on something, for example, breathing or coffee. In this case, if attention is distracted, you should gently return it to the “anchor”.