MetroStyles
Stylish Dinosaur
- Joined
- May 4, 2006
- Messages
- 14,586
- Reaction score
- 30
Friends and family members,
I am soliciting advice from all posters large and small regarding improving focus. From talking to peers under the age of 30, it seems a lot of my generation has issues focusing and not procrastinating. Now I can't say for sure that this affliction doesn't affect the older bros out there, but it has always been my suspicion that television, video games, smart phones, and most of all the internet have led to shortening attention spans and the inability to focus for long periods of time.
I've taken several attention tests and I do not have ADD. When I need to focus (with a deadline looming) it is easy to do so. I zero in, 100%. This is pretty familiar to everyone, I'm sure. But when there is no deadline, I tend to lose hours of time on the internet or just generally messing around. I have 5 hours worth of tasks I want to accomplish in a day, and before I know it it's 9pm and I haven't touched them. The more challenging the task is, the more daunted I feel and unwilling to begin it. And if I do begin it, I take a break to get away from it quickly.
This may seem like a question of motivation or scheduling. Fair enough - that is a major part of it. But I wanted to ask if any of you have experienced the same thing and managed to improve the matter through any practical non-pharmaceutical means.
Possible examples that I have pondered over but haven't tested out myself yet:
- Meditation
- Finding a distraction-free space with no internet access to work at (difficult as all of my work is on my laptop).
- Blocking StyleForum from my browser (have done this previously this year, but just ended up visiting other sites instead)
- Some kind of self-reward or self-penalization system that provides self-created incentives to get things done
- ???
Thanks, broshis.
I am soliciting advice from all posters large and small regarding improving focus. From talking to peers under the age of 30, it seems a lot of my generation has issues focusing and not procrastinating. Now I can't say for sure that this affliction doesn't affect the older bros out there, but it has always been my suspicion that television, video games, smart phones, and most of all the internet have led to shortening attention spans and the inability to focus for long periods of time.
I've taken several attention tests and I do not have ADD. When I need to focus (with a deadline looming) it is easy to do so. I zero in, 100%. This is pretty familiar to everyone, I'm sure. But when there is no deadline, I tend to lose hours of time on the internet or just generally messing around. I have 5 hours worth of tasks I want to accomplish in a day, and before I know it it's 9pm and I haven't touched them. The more challenging the task is, the more daunted I feel and unwilling to begin it. And if I do begin it, I take a break to get away from it quickly.
This may seem like a question of motivation or scheduling. Fair enough - that is a major part of it. But I wanted to ask if any of you have experienced the same thing and managed to improve the matter through any practical non-pharmaceutical means.
Possible examples that I have pondered over but haven't tested out myself yet:
- Meditation
- Finding a distraction-free space with no internet access to work at (difficult as all of my work is on my laptop).
- Blocking StyleForum from my browser (have done this previously this year, but just ended up visiting other sites instead)
- Some kind of self-reward or self-penalization system that provides self-created incentives to get things done
- ???
Thanks, broshis.