Before we start – Deep Thought: How to Strengthen Focus – let’s start with a few Questions:
- How often does your phone, iPad or computer distract you from various activities?
- Do you feel concentration fading more quickly than years before?
- When was the last time you stepped back and contemplated life?
- Can you focus on one given task for a few hours, without getting side-tracked?
- Are you more concerned with followers, likes, and social media presence than actually going out to live life?
- Have you let technological gizmos get in the way of developing the mental processes that made you successful in the past?
If you can’t answer or answered an affirmative these, then maybe its time to get back to Deep Work.
What is Deep Work?
The idea of Deep Work is popularized by The author Cal Newport in – Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. “Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. … People have lost the ability to go deep. Spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.”
This idea was further cultivated in the article, 5 Strategies for Your Most Productive Workday by Amantha Imber. “…Cal Newport suggests that because of the distractions technology imposes on us, we spend the majority of our time doing “shallow work”—work that is non-cognitively demanding. Because of the constant distractions, we have forgotten how to truly engage in “deep work”—that is, focused thinking where we make meaningful progress on our most impactful projects.”
Deep Thought: How To Strengthen Focus
I teach at a Korean University. Nearly all my 200 plus students can barely make it through class without checking their phones. Over half fidget with their phones on a constant basis. Some even rush through activities just to get back to their phones. Many exhibit difficulties focusing on anything that requires mental concentration and effort for any length of time.
Whether their lack of focus is due to age, upbringing, personality or their addiction to tech it’s hard to say. But without the ability to focus on a task requiring mental concentration it would be hard for anyone to succeed.
Sacrificing our cognitive ability at the altar of entertainment, technology, and recreation is a sad way to lose one’s mental prowess.
Christopher Rither
First, we must decide if the pressure to constantly check our tech devices and other ‘shallow work’ lessens our ability to focus on mentally demanding tasks.
Second, Take a long look at yourself (personality, lifestyle, friends, habits, etc). Then, determine the source of your problems and brainstorm possible ways to strengthen your cognitive abilities.
Third, Stop making excuses, take control and remove distractions that keep you from going deep.
Finally, set some goals, make new friends, delete social media accounts, read a book, start a new hobby, change your routines and start activities that force you to go deep mentally, physically and even spiritually.
Focusing on shallow work (tasks requiring little mental effort) is great for the occasional break of a hectic life. Being able to take our mind off things is healthy. Yet, once again, sacrificing our cognitive ability at the altar of entertainment, technology, and recreation is a sad way to lose one’s mental prowess. So if you want to increase your focus and the ability to go deep, maybe its time to take a new path.