100 help plan
Wrong stereotyped thinkingA lot of people have a wrong stereotype:As long as you get enough motivation, you can instantly change your scattered work life and become focused. Similar to the Xi of flossing: you know how to do it, and you know it's good for you, but you often ignore it because of a lack of motivation.
However, the above ideas ignore the difficulty of achieving concentration, and the Xi that it takes to build up "mental strength". In fact, the ability to concentrate highly is a skill that needs to be trained. And if you don't also reduce your reliance on distractions, your efforts to increase focus may be in vain. Studies have shown that people who multitask all the time can't filter out irrelevant matters, and their attention span is chronically distracted.
You will have some boring moments in life, for example, waiting in line for 10 minutes or waiting at the station to meet up with friends, most of you spend time browsing your smartphone, and over time, your brain is no longer capable of deep work, even if you often schedule time to train your ability to focus. Constantly switching attention can have a long-lasting negative impact on the brain.
Resist distractionsMany people think they can switch from a state of distraction to a state of focus as they please, but apparently this idea is overly optimistic: once you get used to being distracted, you'll get obsessed with it.
If you can only commit to a healthy diet one day a week and overeat the rest of the time, it will be difficult for you to lose weight. Similar to it,If you're dealing with distraction only one day a week, it's probably hard to effectively reduce your brain's dependence on it, because you're still succumbing to distractions most of the time.
The biggest source of distraction is the network, so we need to plan ahead for when we use the network, and then avoid using the network altogether outside of those times. The reason for this is that using distracting online tools doesn't by itself diminish your brain's ability to focus.
In fact, the behavior that impairs the ability to concentrate is to switch from low-stimulus, high-value, low-value activities to high-stimulus, low-value activities when you are slightly bored or a little bit cognitively challenged, which makes your brain intolerant of things that are not novel. By splitting the network, you reduce the number of times you succumb to distractions, which increases your ability to control your attention.
Fruitful meditationThe goals of fruitful meditation are:When the body is working and the mind is idle (e.g., walking, cycling, driving, showering), focus on a well-defined professional problem. Like meditation, your attention may become distracted or stagnant, but you have to keep refocusing it on the problem at hand.
You don't need to do a rigorous Xi every day to meditate for results, but at least two or three times a week. Luckily, finding time for this strategy is simple, as it only requires you to use time that might otherwise be wasted (like dog walking and commuting). If all goes well, this can boost your professional output without taking up your work time. In fact, in order to address your most pressing current issues with fruitful meditation, you might even consider scheduling a walk during work hours.
Fruitful meditation is something that needs to be prepared, you need to gather some information beforehand, and then have a certain thinking framework to identify and deal with the next step by considering the relevant variables, and then consolidate your gains.
Deep work requires concentration far beyond the comfort zone of most knowledge workers, and if you don't learn to resist distractions and embrace boredom, you'll struggle to achieve maximum concentration.
Collation adapted from Carl Newport's Deep Work