8/12/2023 0 Comments Hot to avoid distractions![]() To make this change means reflecting on what we are doing to sabotage personal concentration, and then implementing steps towards behavioural change that will improve our chances of concentrating better. Put simply, better concentration makes life easier and less stressful and we will be more productive. Depression, along with anxiety, is a known factor in knocking out concentration. Constant, high levels of circulating stress hormones have an inflammatory and detrimental affect on brain cells, suggests the psychiatrist Edward Bullmore, who has written about the link between inflammation and depression in his latest book, The Inflamed Mind. And this may even be more important than just improving our levels of concentration. The fact that we are the cause of this is, paradoxically, good news since it hands back to us the potential to change our behaviour and reclaim the brain function and cognitive health that’s been disrupted by our digitally enhanced lives. It would seem then that this physiological adaptation, fostered by our behaviour, is a predominant reason for the poor concentration so many people report. Adrenaline and cortisol are designed to support us through bursts of intense activity, but in the long term cortisol can knock out the feel-good hormones serotonin and dopamine in the brain, which help us feel calm and happy, affecting our sleep and heart rate and making us feel jittery. ![]() With our heavy use of digital media, it could be said that we have taken multitasking to new heights, but we’re not actually multitasking rather, we are switching rapidly between different activities. Multitasking, or switching rapidly between conflicting activities? Photograph: Cultura Creative/Alamy In the short term, we adapt well to these demands, but in the long term the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol create a physiological hyper-alert state that is always scanning for stimuli, provoking a sense of addiction temporarily assuaged by checking in. By adopting an always-on, anywhere, anytime, any place behaviour, we exist in a constant state of alertness that scans the world but never really gives our full attention to anything. Both Facebook and Instagram announced they were developing new tools designed to limit usage in response to claims that excessive social media use can have a negative impact on mental health.Ĭontinuous partial attention – or CPA – was a phrase coined by the ex-Apple and Microsoft consultant Linda Stone. In August 2018, research from the UK’s telecoms regulator, Ofcom, reported that people check their smartphones on average every 12 minutes during their waking hours, with 71% saying they never turn their phone off and 40% saying they check them within five minutes of waking. And if it takes around 15 minutes to resume the interrupted activity at a good level of concentration, this means that we are never concentrating very well. The average interruption takes about five minutes, so that is about five hours out of eight. In an eight-hour day, that is about 60 interruptions. In 2002, it was reported that, on average, we experience an interruption every eight minutes or about seven or eight per hour. The impact of interruptions on individual productivity can also be catastrophic. Those distracted by emails and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQ. Constant interruptions can have the same effect as the loss of a night’s sleep. More than half of the 1,100 participants said they always responded to an email immediately or as soon as possible, while 21% admitted they would interrupt a meeting to do so. Those distracted by emails and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQ, twice that found in studies on the impact of smoking marijuana. In 2005, research carried out by Dr Glenn Wilson at London’s Institute of Psychiatry found that persistent interruptions and distractions at work had a profound effect. ![]() We have known for a long time that repeated interruptions affect concentration. This constant fragmentation of our time and concentration has become the new normal, to which we have adapted with ease, but there is a downside: more and more experts are telling us that these interruptions and distractions have eroded our ability to concentrate. I t is difficult to imagine life before our personal and professional worlds were so dominated and “switched on” via smartphones and the other devices that make us accessible and, crucially, so easily distractible and interruptible every second of the day.
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