Train your Brain to be Attentive

In a previous article of mine, I dealt with how attention makes a difference to functioning of sensory organs wherein I derived the fact that our sensory organs are just passive systems that become active only when attention is clubbed with them. This underlines significance of attention in a person’s life and his/her gaining information of the world through his/her five sensory organs.

Attention of brain on a topic in hand requires no or minimum of distractions for which the brain need be trained with a positive and determined attitude of the person.

Lack of attention is already recognized as a health concern with identification of ADHD – Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. New techniques of neuro-imaging show how the brain pays attention, how this attention is lost and what makes the brain to become non-attentive in persons with ADHD.

The problem of lack of attention is no more limited to ADHD patients but spreading in humanity far and wide with more and more people joining the rat race of gaining infinite wealth, authority and fame through phenomena like multi-tasking.

Multi-tasking is the greatest way of self-deception, and this strategy is being adopted by persons who understand very well that multi-tasking is a misnomer to brain functioning as it is for functioning of a computer. Like the processor of a computer, human brain too process only a unitary information at a time and the deception of multi-tasking is created through quick changeovers from one task to another.

In a computer, multitasking results may be saved through pressing a key combination, with no information getting lost in the process. But in functioning of brain, retaining all the processed information in memory of the brain is not that simple and easy. There is no short-cut key combination for this purpose. Therefore, persons involved in apparent multi-tasking are losing the punch of information retention in their respective memories, thus losing even gains of mono-tasking.

Human memory is the measure of experiences and hence maturity and capability of dealing with problems of life being faced by the individual and the humanity. It is not a passive storage of information like that on computer hard-disk and other such devices.

Brain gets easily distracted from taking interest in a particular topic with its hopping tendency from one topic to another, while human gains through creativity, productivity, and involvement in a particular endeavor depend on paying attention. Therefore, for an aspirant of being an achiever, training the brain to be attentive to the task in hand is imperative. Thanks to psychologists, there are ways devised for retraining the brain back to paying attention and thus, making the person to regain his/her natural creativity, productivity and involvement in the task in hand. Let us go point-wise onto the process of training the brain.

The multi-tasking, as is often understood to be working simultaneously on many tasks, is not feasible. However, transition from one task to another is needed when a person has more than one task in hand. For this, I suggest the formula of NGT (Neutral Gear Transition). Suppose a person is on one task and he/she takes up another task immediately on leaving the previous task, his/her brain may not move with him/her from the previous task to the next, still carrying the previous task in its attention. Therefore, attention to the new task is impaired. Therefore, after leaving a task, the brain must be brought to a state of neutrality for freedom from the previous engagement, through a relaxation, or a strolling around, or calming the mind with eyes closed and thoughts serene. Listening to a favorite music for a minute or so also proves helpful. With such an exercise, the brain gets free and ready to pay attention to the new task.

Once, an exercise of this kind becomes a habit, the duration of the break shall become shorter and the brain would begin demanding momentary neutral states in between transitions for resetting itself to be fully attentive.

Too many persons are found to be swayed by attractive phraseology of being positive minded without understanding its true meaning. Some consider it considering all humans as equals and dear ones, while some others treat is as always being just hopeful considering nothing to be impossible. The cruel reality of life is that there are really good and bad persons, and that many things are impossible to be achieved for a great majority of human-beings. Being misled by the above-said ideological statements, one may get hurt when stabbed by someone really bad, or may have a broken psyche on a miserable failure in trying to achieve something beyond one’s means.

Being positive, indeed, means being a realist in understanding the circumstances, and proceed to gain maximum from the available circumstances with caution and confidence on any feasible endeavor.