I know this might come off as boasting or trite. But the most valuable thing we as individuals have is our attention span. Our ability to give our full attention to one and only thing in front of us. Amidst the tumultuous waters of multi-tasking and constant binge tapping of alerts, social conversations – our attention span is dying. Dying by million distractions.
A few weeks ago – I started doing couple of simple things. No big plan, I just thought I would do some simple things to make myself less distracted. Here is the list of things:
0. I meditated for 15 mins every evening.
1. I stopped using my laptop or phone at least 30 mins before I went to bed.
2. I read an actual dead tree book for those 30 mins and then simply went to sleep without worrying about what happened on FB.
3. When I wake up, I didn’t jump into my phone – which usually starts of as, what’s the weather going to be like and then like 30 mins later I know everyone’s status on FB.
4. I didn’t check my personal email till noon.
5. I didn’t check FB when I was bored. I read something interesting about my field of work.
6. I jumped straight into work as soon I got to office.
This was all new to me and somedays really hard. But I kept at it. Not sure what’s going to come off of it.
After like 7 days, I realized few things.
1. My concentration while reading a book or writing code, spiked up. I was able to focus on one thing in front of me for more than 30 mins, without being physically interrupted.
2. To my fascination, whenever I read long articles – like from longform etc, I was *actually* able to finish the article in one sitting.
3. When I interacted with my daughter, I was not hiding behind my iPhone, I was able to pay full attention to what she was saying. Oh what a fascinating mind is of a 4 year old!!
That’s it. Nothing major. I wasn’t aiming for this level of focus and concentration but I think what I did actually helped me build it.
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