Attention & productivity

There is a direct correlation to your productivity and your ability to pay attention to a specific task. Attention is one of the cognitive skills that can be developed by some simple practices. No doubt, pronounced productivity keeps us on the top in the field of our work. In other words, attention plays a crucial role to stay productive and to excel in the field of your work.

Current scenario: Recent researches show that the ability to pay attention to a specific task has dramatically have gone down in the recent two decades. We live in the information age and obviously, the information is abundant. We are bombarded with enormous amount of information each day in the light of technical advancement such as email, mobile, whatsapp, social media such as Facebook, twitter etc. Our present living condition is completely different than what we had experience few decades before. Distraction in the form of information overload is the main reason for the decline in our ability to pay attention.

There is also another research which says that we are attentive only 51% of the time and the remaining 49% of the time, our mind wanders on unnecessary random thoughts. Unknowingly, we have this pattern that happens on day today basis. Because of this, we literally waste almost half of our life time unproductively.

Tests: Here are few simple tests that can be performed right away to verify the above research facts.

1.       You would have taken probably a minute or two reading the content of this blog from the start to this point. Have you 100% completely engaged in this blog for the past one minute? Or were your mind engaged with some other thoughts irrelevant to the current task? 

2.       Here is another test .The test is to stay attentive but this time you are KOWINGLY testing yourself. The task is to stay focussed on one single thought for a minute. This thought could be anything related to something which happened at the start of today or even something that you will be doing tonight. But, JUST stay on one single thought for a minute. You would have noticed that the mind starts wandering after few seconds even though you wanted to stay focussed on that single chosen thought.

Default Network: Wandering mind is the default network of the brain. Attention is the activity from the prefrontal cortex of the brain. If you have failed in one or both of the above tests, do not get discouraged. This is quite NORMAL and in fact, majority of us fall in this category. The good news is that attention faculty of the brain can be developed by practice. Like any other skills, this skill is learnable & one can develop this skill.

Practice: Here is a simple practice to strengthen the attention muscles of the brain. Begin the practice to sit in upright posture & stay relaxed. Pay attention to your breathing preferably at your abdomen. Initially, try to have few rounds of deep breathing and switch back to normal automatic, spontaneous breathing. You might witness the rise & fall of your breath. As you inhale, your abdomen bulges out and as you exhale, abdomen sinks in. Just follow the natural rhythm of your breathing for five minutes. You would definitely witness the mind slowly starts wandering after few seconds or minutes after the start of the exercise. Once you become aware of wandering mind, gently bring your attention back to your breathing and continue to observe nonjudgmentally the natural rhythm. This five minutes practice every day strengthens your attention faculty & you will see a good change within a month in the way you pay attention to a specific task.

So, simply enhance your attention faculty by such a simple  practice, increase your productivity & excel in the field of your work .