Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/333446
Tips Health 32 www.jobsfor teams.com JOBS for TEAMS | Your Concentration Training Program: 11 Exercises That Will Strengthen Your Attention I n this series on mastering your attention, we have emphasized the fact that attention is not just the abil- ity to focus on a single task without being distracted, but in fact is com- prised of several different elements that must be effectively managed. But this doesn't mean that single- minded focus is not of paramount impor- tance. Yesterday we compared managing your different kinds of attention to being the supreme commander of your mind – you must be able to deftly maneuver and deploy your units to various battles. But good management can only get you so far; to win the war on distraction, the absolute strength of your voluntary attention — your focus foot soldiers – greatly matters. Research has shown that individuals who can sustain their attention for long periods of time perform better on all sorts of cognitive challenges than those who cannot. A man with a scatter-shot attention span will only be able to ex- perience one plane of existence; he can skim across the surface of the world's vast knowledge and wisdom, but is unable to dive deeper and discover the treasures below. The man with an iron-clad focus can do both; he is the boat captain and the pearl diver and the world is truly his oyster. If you have a goal to learn and under- stand as much about the world as you possibly can before you die, strengthen- ing your power of concentration is not an option, it's a necessity. Think of Your Mind as a Muscle Last time we used the analogy of be- ing supreme commander of your mind to explain attention management; when it comes to attention strengthening, we'd encourage you to think of your mind as a muscle. The parallels between strength- ening your body and strengthening your mind are in fact so close that it's really not so much an analogy as a description of reality. Your physical muscles and your at- tention "muscles" both have a limited amount of strength at any given time, their stamina and power can either atro- phy from inactivity or strengthen from vigorous, purposeful exercise, and they require rest and recovery after they've been intensely exerted. You get the same feeling of internal dread/doubt right before you begin an intense workout – the one that says "I'm not sure I want to do this" – as you do right before you decide whether or not you're going to read a long article, and in both cases you have to set your mind, bite down, and get going with it. Just as you can hit a wall in a tough workout where you think you can't do one more rep, in the middle of reading a By Brett & Kate McKay, courtesy of www.artofmanliess.com