“Energy Flows where attention goes”
When you keep your attention focused, you eventually utilize your energy to its full potential.
The first step to improve your attention is to train the mind to recognize when attention wanders away. If you are practicing distraction unknowingly, your mind is trained to be distracted, and you might not have the cognizance of when attention wanders away.
We are what we practice. When you practice recognizing the wandering attention; at the end, you will keep your focus intense and improve your attention skills.
In my last article, I hope you have understood the importance of improved attention for life skills development.
➡ Chapter 1: 4 Steps to Be Your Own Life Coach
➡ Chapter 2: How to Understand Your Mind
👉 Part 1: What is Consciousness?
👉 Part 2: What is the Subconscious Mind?
👉 Part 3: How to Control Your Mind
👉 Part 4: How to Stop Reacting and Start Responding
👉 Part 5: How to Master Your Mind
➡ Chapter 3: Why Do You Need to Be Attentive?
➡ Chapter 4: You Are Here
➡ Chapter 5: How to Boost Your Intelligence
➡ Chapter 6: What is Self-Awareness?
👉 Part 1: How To Stop Unwanted Thoughts
👉 Part 2: How to Be Happy
👉 Part 3: How to Deal With Anxiety & Depression
➡ Chapter 7: What is Conscious Intelligence & How to Be Conscious Intelligent
In this article, I shall share the most effective ways to improve your attention. In my last article, I have already mentioned that attention can be of three types; these are sustained attention, divided attention, and selective attention.
In the journey of life, you have to improve sustained attention skills so that you can become an active listener, a good problem-solver, and an effective decision-maker.
So without further delay, let’s get started.
3 Ways to Improve Attention
Here are the 3 ways to improve your attention:
Training the Mind to recognize the wandering attention
“Improving attention is a skill to train the mind to realize when and how attention wanders away, bringing the attention back when it wanders away”
Basically, we train the mind to have wandering attention unknowingly due to two kinds of distraction, one is the internal distraction, due to the unstructured thoughts; and another one is the external distraction, due to external sensory inputs, the smartphone notification is one of the external source distractions.
Everyone may have different sources of distraction. A student might lose attention to study when he gets a notification of a Facebook update. At the same time, another student may lose attention when he gets notification from a popular news app.
The first student programmed his mind to get curiosity when he gets a Facebook notification; the second student programmed his mind to get curiosity when he gets news notification. They might have programmed their mind subconsciously, without their cognizance, due to a mixture of social learning behavior or cognitive learning behavior.
Similarly, you might be distracted by your memorized thoughts, without your cognizance. I have mentioned in the mind-model that thoughts are always ready to process in the primary processing unit. When you are fully engaged, the thoughts can’t distract you, but when you keep your mind idle, even while you are not sleeping, the memorized thoughts pop up from the subconscious mind and hijack your awareness.
Engaging Your Mind
“If you don’t engage your mind, memorized thoughts are always ready to engage your mind”
Your mind doesn’t stay in the vacuum, it needs mental activities. When you sleep, only the processing unit of the mind takes rest and you stop experiencing the consciousness. The subconscious mind and the conscious mind are always active, that’s why you can wake up again after a deep sleep.
The subconscious mind is always throwing bulks of thoughts, emotions, information, and senses to the processing unit of your mind. When you learn to filter out the unwanted one through the conscious mind and engage the processing unit in the right direction, you become the controller of your mind.
Practicing Mindfulness
“Life is neither in the past nor in the future, only your thoughts let you travel time”
Being attentive to your work is the key to practice mindfulness. The bulks of unwanted thoughts are always ready to let you experience past or future as reality. When you pay attention to the present, you not only control your mind but, you become productive as well.
There are various programs of mindfulness meditation available through the internet. You may choose any of them to make meditation a daily practice so that you can have a peaceful mind to be mindful throughout the day.
Conclusion
There is no other way than practice to improve your attention. Through practice, you can develop a habit to recognize and bring the attention back when it wanders away. To do this, you only need to be aware of your activities only for few days; eventually, your habit to be aware of your attention will run on autopilot.
Do you have any interesting technique to share for improving attention?
Please do let me know in the comment.
Must read: Why do you need to be attentive?
Ashim, the Founder of MindWiper, loves to learn, share, and educate various dimensions of life skills development. After graduating with an engineering degree, he worked with major ICT industries in India and finally he followed his dream to integrate technology for Cognitive Skills & Life Skills Development.