Try this experiment on yourself: Write out an experience you had today, and while you’re in the middle of a sentence, pick up your smartphone and scroll through your social media feed for one minute, then resume your writing. How much time did you spend trying to re-focus on your original task?
This duration represents the cognitive cost of the interruption, but research by psychologist Dr Gloria Mark of the University of California, Irvine has found that there are also psychological costs. Read on to find out how your ability to control your attention can affect your mental health, and learn some practical tips to improve your concentration!
What is concentration?
Concentration, or ‘attentional control’ in cognitive neuroscience, is a person’s ability to focus and shift their attention flexibly. Flexibility is the key as some types of interruptions may be beneficial, e.g. taking a break, seeking help for completing the current task, or responding to an emergency. It shows a person’s ability to self-regulate their attention to focus on stimuli or goals with the highest priority in the moment.
Effects of poor concentration on mental health
Most people might only think of the adverse impact of poor attentional control on productivity, but here are some adverse effects on mental health:
Psychological distress
Research has shown that interruptions to work may increase psychological distress, such as frustration, stress, time pressure, and effort. This might be due to the extra time and effort needed to recall their train of thought before an interruption and the need to make up for lost time.
The extent of the impact also depends on individual differences in managing interruptions. Other findings suggest that employees who work in multitasking environments and are highly stressed from frequent email interruptions tend to express more anger in their work emails.
Stress-coping ability
Frequent interruptions can weaken our ability to be mindful, i.e. to attend to our inner experiences as they come and go, such as our sensations, feelings and thoughts. This can result in less control of our own emotional responses to stressors and weaker resilience. Various mindfulness practices or therapies, e.g. Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction and Dialectical Behavioural Therapy are based on the positive relationship between stress coping and mindfulness.
Research has also found that good attentional control benefits people with anxiety. Anxious people are more likely to have attentional bias, so they tend to over-focus on threatening situations. Better concentration helps them correct their attentional bias.
Empathic communication
If you’re unable to pay sustained attention when others tell you about their feelings or thoughts, it’d be difficult for you to show empathy in your interpersonal interactions. Empathy is the ability to show your understanding of another person’s perspective as an equal in a non-judgemental way. It’s essential for building trust and rapport with the other person to create strong relationships.
How to improve your ability to focus
While it may not be easy to avoid distractions when we’re flooded with information from the internet every day, there are some practical ways to help you improve your ability to focus.
1. Minimise distractions
Remove potential sources of distraction. Keep your smart devices away from your visual field or keep them in silent mode without obvious pop-up notifications. Put your smartphone away while you’re talking with another person unless you’re expecting an urgent call or message. If there’s a lot of background noise, try changing locations or putting on earphones if it’s not feasible to distance yourself from the noise.
2. Avoid multitasking
Decades of scientific studies have shown that it’s not possible to ‘multitask’ in the sense of working on two cognitive tasks simultaneously, e.g. writing a business email and replying to messages from your colleagues or friends on your smartphone. You’re actually switching between both tasks intermittently, which means you’re not fully focused on either one. This doesn’t only weaken your attentional control but also reduce your productivity, as your brain needs to make extra effort to recall your original train of thought and re-focus on a task after interruption.
3. Plan your break time
We all have a limited attention span. Taking a break strategically helps regain our ability to focus. Choose to rest when you need the least mental effort to pick up on where you left off. For example, pause after you’ve read a whole paragraph instead of in the middle of it. If you’re writing a long report or article, you could take a break when you’re moving from one idea to the next.
4. Spend more time doing activities that help you experience ‘flow’
If you have the experience of being so absorbed in a challenging task that you weren’t aware of anything else in the moment (or even yourself, e.g. forgetting to take a break or have your meal), then you might have experienced ‘flow‘ — a concept in positive psychology. You’re fully concentrated on what you’re doing with a full sense of control. You’re more likely to experience flow when you’re doing something you’re passionate about or that you find challenging and yet manageable.
5. Practise mindfulness
Research on mindfulness has shown its positive impact on mental health, e.g. better emotional well-being and behavioural control. It emphasises being fully aware of the present through your sensations, feelings, and thoughts, and adopting a non-judgemental attitude to whatever you’re experiencing in the moment.
Many people misunderstand mindfulness as an exercise to achieve stillness of the mind by keeping out distracting feelings and thoughts, but it actually aims to help you accept their presence with a sense of detachment. The more you practise, you better you’ll be in controlling your attention regardless of your ever-changing inner experiences.
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
***
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
Compliments Men Want to Hear More Often | Relationships Aren’t Easy, But They’re Worth It | The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex | ..A Man’s Kiss Tells You Everything |
—–
Photo credit: Ben White on Unsplash