The development of attention concentration - effective exercises
Listen to your emotions. What do you feel now? Calm? Relaxation? Voltage? Excitation?
Our emotional state, like a pendulum, oscillates from side to side - from depression or apathy to a surge of the brightest feelings. Despite the fact that the oscillations of the pendulum take us in completely opposite directions, both of these provisions of the pendulum pose one great danger - a temporary loss of the ability to active concentration of attention.
When do you control the emotional pendulum?
Answer: when it is in a zone of relative peace.
Small oscillations of the pendulum from side to side - from mild fatigue to a vigorous state - this is the zone of your optimal performance. In this position, the emotional pendulum is your indispensable helper.
• First, it keeps you interested in what you are currently doing.
• Secondly, as fatigue accumulates in you, it tells you that it will now change its quiet amplitude and soar into the zone of apathy and absent-mindedness.
• Thirdly, under the influence of some sudden external signals, it warns that it is ready to soar in the opposite direction, besides your will, drawing all your attention with it.
How an emotional pendulum dispels attention
When we are bored or completely relaxed, or somewhat confused, or tired, our emotional pendulum shows a reduced emotional background. In this state, we feel a certain lack of strength in order to
• concentrate fully
• concentrate your thoughts,
• focus attention
on something that requires certain volitional efforts from us. The pendulum of emotions seemed to have swung in the direction of the complete decline of our brain activity.
And here we begin to distract easily from our business, our thoughts can quite involuntarily flow in a different direction, as if we fall into a light stupor. As a result, what was in the focus of our attention, is safely shifted to the periphery of our consciousness. A gradual but steady decline in brain activity led to a loss of attention.
Individual psychophysiological differences are such that for someone this period of optimal performance is very short. And someone is able to maintain the concentration of attention as much as that is required for the problem to be solved. Special training concentration will help to achieve such a disciplined attention.
Exercises to expand the focus area
When a psychologist is asked for help, for example, in overcoming the fear of speaking to a large audience, he will most likely offer his client a cycle of training exercises. Each exercise gradually reduces the level of fear, and finally, the problem is resolved. Psychologists propose the same principle for individual attention concentration.
For example, the Click-Click simulator on Wikium website is very useful here. This exercise is aimed at step-wise expansion of the focus area, which is ensured by a gradual increase of
• the time during which you successfully cope with the tasks,
• the number of objects you can keep in view.
Another exercise - “Find the object” - not only stimulates concentration of attention, but also allows you to develop the ability to hold a certain pace of work for as long as possible.
Both exercises will bring absolute benefit to those who cannot afford to change or slow down in the process of work. This, for example, includes all those who receive clients during the day - doctors, salespeople, lawyers, consultants.
Individual time focus on work can also be increased through targeted training on the simulator "Unique." The task here is based on the principle of gradual depletion of attention. Struggling with the depletion of attention and moving it away in time, we increase the amplitude of our emotional pendulum in the optimal zone, which means, step by step, we increase the period of our performance. This exercise is especially useful for those who, for example, read texts that require editorial editing, or prepare financial reports, bringing together several different documents.
How an emotional pendulum provokes attention problems
When we are too excited, extremely agitated, have strong fear or rage, the emotional pendulum soars sharply in the opposite direction. Now, as if by force, against our will, we are drawn into the seething whirlpool of the strongest feelings and, as a result, we become:
• addicted to our experiences,
• fully drowned by the storm of feelings,
• not able to rationally relate to what is happening around.
The reason for this is a special reflex, that was named by the famous physiologist I.P. Pavlov, orientation. Its other words, the “What is” reflex, transmits its role in our life in the most accurate way. Any visible and unexpected changes around can instantly cause this reflex in a person. Like everything else in our psyche, it is useful, helping to notice the approach of a dangerous or useful object in time. But it is due to it that our emotional pendulum soars upwards with each sudden change of environment. And the attention immediately changes from voluntary, deliberate, to involuntary. In other words, we are distracted from our task beyond our will. And it takes a lot of effort to return to their working state.
It is not possible to “turn off” the orientation reflex at all, of course. But you can learn to maintain composure and concentration in conditions when a lot of various kinds of irritants literally fall on you. Managing attention is, above all, conscious focusing on an object and the same conscious abstraction from everything that distracts or prevents concentration.
Exercises to develop the ability to cope with involuntary attention
If in the first example we saw that the oscillation of the pendulum in one direction leads to a decrease in concentration, then in this case the oscillation of the pendulum leads to the fact that our attention involuntarily switches to a sudden strong external stimulus. Is it possible to preserve the ability to manage your voluntary attention in such conditions? Yes, if you spend some effort on special attention training.
Exercises of concentration can really help to cope with interference, such as
• great excitement before an exam or important negotiation;
• fear of being mistaken in solving a problem where the price of a mistake is especially high;
• irritation from unexpected and distracting interference.
What is more, these exercises on concentration develop an important ability to resist bright, distracting informational signals. It is one thing when you work in an environment where there are neither unexpected noises, nor distracting conversations, nor vivid scenes such as television advertising. And it is completely different when you are required to concentrate as much as possible on a difficult task in the conditions of a multitude of hindrances - from sudden explosions of the cheerful laughter of your colleagues to the seductive aromas of delicious food.
A particularly large effect in the development of the ability to withstand emotionally strong disturbances is provided by our “Florist” and “Count Colors” simulators. With the help of these simulators, an artificial obstacle to attention is created. The brain is trained to ignore this hindrance, to exclude it from consciousness, fully focusing on the task.
Do you want to achieve the result? Then wait for you simulator "Florist: overload." You will have to use all your willpower to master this exercise. But, having achieved success in it, you can then effectively apply the skill acquired through this exercise, in order to maintain composure in serious stressful situations.
Simulator "Aquarium" is designed to help you in the formation of the ability to maintain focus solely on the desired object and not be distracted by all the others, even if they are so similar. When you train, you teach your brain the important ability to distinguish a figure from a background, to keep this figure in your field of vision even when the background and the figure almost merge with each other. As an example, you can take a situation where you have to follow a certain car in a stream of cars and not lose sight of it.
If you want to develop your attention, online exercise must be done regularly.
