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I Can't Focus!

January 12, 2012
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Photo of teen girl out of focus holding the words focus.How's your brain feeling these days? Is your life flowing smoothly with your thoughts focused and organized, or is your mind a seemingly impossible jumble of information?

If you're in school you not only have homework to deal with, you're also figuring out your social life, planning for college, learning to deal with all the emotions the events in your life cause, and you may even have a job on top of all of that! With so many things to think about, it's understandable how hard it can be to sweep everything aside except for the one thought that you're trying to focus on.

The Internet Done Broke My Brain!

The Shallows : What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains by Nicholas G Carr

The brain is an amazing organ. Among its many features is something called plasticity. That means it can change its structure and pathways to become best at doing what it does the most, and something our brains do a lot of these days is surf the web. Unfortunately, there are some researchers, like Nicholas Carr, who believe that the Internet is training our brains to be inefficient and not too good at concentrating. Often we are switching between webpages online, looking at pictures here and there, starting to read an article and following an embedded link to another topic, opening another browser tab to check our Facebook and email - well, already you can see how many things you're doing at once in this example! And if you do that every day for many hours at a time, your brain will be really good at it! So when you sit down to write a paper and two minutes later find yourself itching to do something, anything else - there's your brain doing what you've trained it to do best.

So, is There No Hope?

Is your brain stuck like this forever? No, not if you want it to change! Just like your brain structure may have been changed to keep switching between different tasks, you can change it back to being able to focus and concentrate. You just have to strengthen those parts of your brain, like you would build muscle with weightlifting. It may be hard at first, but the more and more you do it, the easier and easier it will be.

Help is Out There

For quick and easy tips on improving focus, check out About.com's "Top 5 Tips to Improve Your Concentration" The five steps are made easy to remember and apply in your daily life using the acronym FOCUS.

Another excellent resource on better concentration that you can access online is on the Sound Oasis website. It's a more in-depth article than the last one, with more information on what may be the cause of poor concentration-so, to help train your brain, see if you can read it without checking your email or opening another browser tab!

And of Course...

...getting away from the possible distractions of the Internet and reading a book about how to improve focus is a great step too!

Find Your Focus Zone : An Effective New Plan To Defeat Distraction And Overload by Lucy Jo PalladinoFind Your Focus Zone: an Effective New Plan to Defeat Distraction and Overload by Lucy Jo Palladino

Five Good Minutes in Your Body: 100 Morning Practices to Help You Stay Calm & Focused All Day Long by Jeffrey Brantley, Wendy Millstine

Mind Performance Hacks by Ron Hale-Evans

 

Author Bio:

Michelle K is a Librarian at the Brisbane Library. With the excitement of the holidays distracting her, she had to use all the concentration she could muster to write this blog post for you!