How to overcome Boredom and Maximize Focus? 4 key strategies!
One of the main problems most students face is loosing focus during studying. It is too hard to sit at your desk and keep studying for a single hour without being distracted. Recently, a largely used term for a state of hyperfocus is “deep work”. Hereby, we go beyond the ability to concentrate on a task for a mere hour. Instead, we define it as attaining higher levels of focus sustained over extended periods. For more insight take a look at our previous blog post: What is Deep Work and why is it important?
In this article, we introduce four distinct approaches to implement deep work. These strategies provide practical strategies to maintain focus and enhance productivity during your study sessions.
The 4 concepts we are about to discuss are derived from the renowned book “deep work” for Cal Newport. Our exploration will involve a comparative analysis, evaluating these concepts from the perspectives of both students and working professionals. Thus, tackle the academic and scientific side as well as the industrial economic side. The different philosophies will be ordered based on their tolerance for shallow activities, from the least tolerant to the most.
Content:
1. The most important question: Why is it hard to stay focused?
4. The Rhythmic Philosophy / Deep Work scheduling
1. The most important question: Why is it hard to stay focused?
Before going through the different philosophies, let’s understand the things preventing us from achieving high levels of concentration. Let’s uncover the problem before getting to the solution.
The main cause of losing concentration in general is the compelling urge to turn your attention towards something more superficial, attractive, funny, and most importantly, easy to do and involves no effort. It is a fact because staying focused for a long period, as numerous studies suggest typically more than 25 to 30 minutes, is a challenging task for our brains.
Scrolling through social media is the most common example which every one acknowledge its drawbacks, still most of us keep doing it. Social media stands out as one of the most dangerous distractions. Normally, when feeling tired you would take a break and stop doing anything, which is by the way a good practice to acquire. However this is not an option anymore. It would be more fun to take your phone and spend that time scrolling on your screen.
Other examples, besides being online, can also trigger the same distracting urge: binge-watching movies, playing video games, and even meeting friends. Yes! social meetings usually can be critical for your attention on a larger scale. The effect of that contact can last for days and you can be thinking of the things that happened during that meeting because we are usually psychologically and cognitively engaged when we meet our friends.
So to summarize, the problem is with our internal urge to divert attention to something more amusing, which ich totally natural and can be controlled over time. Cal Newport makes it clear when he says: “This Desire turns out to be the norm, not the exception”. However this urge can be magnified by external factors that make concentration much harder.
Now that you now the generally formulated reason let’s discover different ways to overcome distractions and to activate the deep work mode…
2.The Monastic Philosophy
In a nutshell: maximize deep work by eliminating or radically reducing the amount of shallow work.
This philosophy assumes that you can reach your highest levels of productivity by immersing yourself in a state of intense and uninterrupted concentration spanning several consecutive days! Any kind of distraction within this period will ruin the whole process. It is not just about quitting social media, it requires avoiding unnecessary human interactions, exposure to events, ideas, and any kind of activities that may perturbate your mind.
The downside of this strategy is that it is applicable only for a limited category of people. Only those who can detach themselves from responsibilities are able to adopt it. Researchers and writers are the most common examples that embrace this approach.
This philosophy may not be optimal for students and workers in general. For students it is too hard to be isolated from daily responsibilities like cooking, going to the supermarket, home shores and homework. On the other hand it is almost impossible for workers, for the simple reason that we explained in a previous article “Why is Deep work rare? Is that a disadvantage or an advantage?” , 80% of your tasks are shallow practices, such as answering emails and messages, doing some random tasks, attending meetings etc…
3.The Bimodal Philosophy
In a nutshell: it is not a 100% elimination of all the distractions. Instead, being open to embrace shallow work when working deeply is not the priority.
This strategy is more flexible as you can switch between deep work for hard tasks and non-deep practices that are necessary for different reasons. However, this flexibility doesn’t mean freely switching between the two frameworks, this model suggests that deep work is only then useful, when you provide enough long time for yourself to stay focused. Often, the minimum is a whole day without shallow work.
Bimodal philosophy is more convenient for college and work compared to the monastic philosophy. You are free to accomplish shallow tasks including your different responsibilities and free time activities, however, you must dedicate specific days for pure focus on a particular goal to accomplish. This can be learning for an exam or working on honing a skill to improve your working performance.
This is a more realistic and efficient approach compared to the monastic philosophy. On one hand it is more flexible than isolating your self for long periods which can be harmful for your mind wellbeing as well as your psychological state. On the other hand it is more productive than just working deeply for couple of hours or half a day. Moreover people will respect your right to disappear if you alternate between isolating yourself from their distractions and embracing it as a shut down time or a reset for your brain.
4.The Rhythmic Philosophy / Deep Work scheduling
In a nutshell: focuses on easing the transition into deep work mode by integrating it with established habits. Instead of isolating oneself from distractions, this philosophy aims to make the shift from shallow practices to deep work as seamless as possible through the creation of a rhythmic routine.
How can you achieve that?
The best way to minimize the effects of distractions in our life is through planning. This strategy is based on generating consistent time slots, regardless of their duration, minimizing the need to take constant decisions about how and when to work deeply. Success with this approach depends on self-control, discipline and consistency, with the chain method illustrating the cumulative impact of maintaining these commitments.
As disappearing for long periods is usually not an option especially for students as well as workers in standard office jobs, this philosophy is the most common and natural one to adopt. You just have to train your brain to focus in daily repeated time slots without the need for a dedicated large amount of time.
5.The Journalistic Method
In a nutshell: as you have already remarked a specific order is being followed we are going from the zero distractions strategy step for step towards more flexible approaches. The Journalistic method is about working deeply at any time you want.
This philosophy believes that you are able to switch to deep work state whenever you want. This ability doesn’t come naturally however. It depends on two elements, consistent practice and conviction that you need to do the work!
By reducing the need to think about the time slots available for you to work in, you provide yourself with more time to work deeply. Its a powerful method if you are able to acquire it. However it is the hardest one to adopt and integrate in your work week.