When learning, focusing may be quite hard there are several reasons for it, and several strategies to bring the focus to the subject at hand. People with attention-deficit (ADHD) and emotional problems may occasionally need some extra help to regain focus, including breathing exercises and medicine.
Fatigue
Quite often focus drifting away is quite natural. We could simply be too tired for the task we are trying to handle. In this case, there is no point trying to focus, and it may be better to rest. Short Pomodoro breaks can handle easy cases, 20 min power nap may handle a lack of sleep, and sometimes all you need is just a small walk outdoors to change the environment or a couple of jumps and stretches to get rid of extra energies. Be tentative to your mind and your body. Typically it is a bad idea to force yourself doing more than you can handle.
Distractions
Some distractions are subtle, others are not. If a loud-talker is discussing something with your roommate, someone is eating a pizza 2 meters from you, or someone working with heavy mechanical equipment outdoors, ignoring the distraction is hard. Quite often it is best to use the distraction as an excuse to have a break or to find a better location to work. Decent antinoise earpiece (I use Bose QC25) with some meditation noise will occasionally help. Alternatively, try doing something so engaging that you will forget all about those distractions. When thinking visually and creatively we are not as easily distracted as we are for example when building logic chains.
Boring material
Sometimes we need to do something so boring that our attention drifts away. If this does not happen often, we can do what we do in meditation: let our focus drift off and wait till it comes back. Otherwise, we need to create some interest using our creativity. Creativity beats grit since it does not exhaust our willpower. We can generate interest by asking some questions, creating a competition, trying to proof something that makes us excited (even if we know we are wrong). Turning something into a game and finding ways to reward small successes typically works. Dream of how you will use what you learn in the future, and you will get more motivation to learn it now.
Stress
Some people perform well under pressure, other people just freeze. The metacognition of “what happens if I fail” or “somebody is watching, I am so uncomfortable” can easily deplete your focus. There are some reframing tricks that work in this case. We can step out of our situation by using various formulas. For example, I often assume that I already lost, now I can focus on getting my best result without worrying for the outcome. Some people use the word “weird” to describe what they do, e.g. “I am a weird professional suggesting this weird idea”. In each way, we focus on how we do what we do and distance ourselves from the results of our actions.
Guilt or FOMO
Whatever we choose to do, we miss out on doing something else. This generates guilt if the obligation is towards somebody else or fear of missing out if the obligation is towards yourself. In any case, we start wondering if we made the right choice. Quite often other people trigger these feelings by criticizing our decisions. Accepting missing out being an integral part of our life may be hard, but wondering about decisions we made will definitely cause us miss more. By taking different decisions and increasing our experience, we will eventually make the decisions which we will be happy with. It helps to have clear priorities and visualize the things we would miss out in each case. Once we are happy with our decisions, we will have fewer concerns about the things we miss. If the guilt is unbearable, maybe you did make the wrong decision and need to learn from it.
Other
Sometimes our focus drifts and we do not know why, and this is OK. Here are some steps that may help:
- It there something physical that can be fixed? E.g. maybe simply take a drink or change posture….
- Try to see where the focus is drifting to. Do not feel the guilt or urge to return it back immediately. Give yourself a minute or two, maybe the focus will drift back.
- Look at the clock and see when you can take a break, take a short break if you need to.
- Think why what you need to do is exciting and try to get interested in it.
- Distance yourself from what could be stressful.
- See if you can handle the task some other day. Maybe an acceptable delay will fix the focus issue.
Focus is something we are getting better at as we practice. If we got focused doing something once, we can do it again.
