Just right now in this very moment the line which you are reading right now are you making a transition between the thoughts you are going through. The thing is many of us are just lacking the focus. We are living in supernormal stimuli where we are just surrounded by screens and social media. I am not a unique person who isn’t facing this problem. No matter what I am doing my mind is constantly running from one thought to the other. It processes different thoughts even if the action doesn’t match with the thoughts. Even if you are unable to sleep because you constantly overthink then it's still a problem of lack of mindfulness. My dad used to complain that he used to lose his count during his reps because his mind went from counting to paying off taxes. Even another thing is your attentional space is decreasing. You are unable to stick to a thing where you need more focus like reading this post. Your attention retention span is decreasing. Habits take very little of your attentional space because once they become familiar with your behaviour it takes very little thought once we get going with them. When there are 3 to 4 small habitual tasks like chewing bubble gum while jogging and listening to music things work perfectly fine but once you are getting too used to things like that you are losing your ability to focus on one thing. One example I would give is listening to an audiobook while doing some menial task. I genuinely didn’t use to retain any info while performing tasks. Multi-tasking also makes your focus unbalanced. The more you focus on two tasks your mind becomes habitual to that mode.
I switch my task so often like we switch tabs on chrome. The more I keep changing my tasks I end up completing none with an overthinker’s mindset. Attentional space allows us to hold manipulate and connect info, it occupies our short-term memory so that we could remember and can work on it.
How to fix the mind wandering?
The initial and quick fix to this problem is to keep track of what is occupying your attentional space. The more quickly you will notice what’s occupying your attentional space the more easily you can return to your main task.
If you want to multitask make sure one task doesn’t overpower the other task. The more difficult the tasks are the more difficult it becomes to maintain focus on one thing.
Be selective on your task list. Select one task at one time so that you can complete one task and move to the other one. Don’t switch between tasks. Also, try taking breaks between two tasks to avoid the residue of the previous task.
Another thing that works for me is that when I have tons of things to do throughout the day I choose one single task as the highlight of the day. Selecting a highlight of the day helps you to focus on that one single thing and deviate from other menial tasks on your task list. It's called the highlight of the day. A highlight of the day isn’t the only task on your task list but it's the main hero task of the day. A highlight can be the most urgent or the most important thing you need to get done asap.
Mind is like a butterfly it goes from one thought to other once you feel that one task is difficult to execute. But finding peace is not easy but not impossible. Mind stability is important, attaining complete control over your mind is like a marathon and not a sprint, the small efforts you take to focus on single tasks will help you to gain mindfulness. Read the book summaries of "Hyperfocus" and "Make time" to understand more about gaining your focus back.
Hope you found this post worth your time. Subscribe to our mailing list below.
Cheers ✌️
Comments