How to develop attention: a detailed guide + list of books and online services

Nineteen simple techniques for developing attention and observation.

By performing these exercises between times, during breaks from work or during rest, you will significantly develop the stability and volume of your voluntary attention.

Attention is the concentration of the subject’s activity at a given moment in time on any real or ideal object (object, event, image, reasoning, etc.). For most people, the volume of attention is 7 ± 2 units.

Attention is characterized by:

• firstly: volume, intensity, stability;
• secondly: fluctuations, switchability.

Attention happens:

• involuntary (passive, emotional);
• voluntary (active, volitional).

Conditions favorable to the development of voluntary attention:

1. Normal physical and mental condition.

2. Systematic organization of work (creation of favorable external and internal conditions).

3. Clear goal setting.

4. A combination of mental and physical activities (for example, taking notes while reading).

5. Alternation of activities (for example, alternate reading of a textbook and a detective story).

Exercise 5

1. Take two markers.

2. Try drawing with both hands at the same time. And it starts and ends at the same time. With one hand - a circle, the other - a triangle. The circle should, if possible, have an even circumference, and the triangle should have sharp corner tips.

3. Now try to draw in 1 minute. maximum circles and triangles.

4. Grading system:

• less than 5 - bad;
• 5-7 - average;
• 8-10 - good;
• more than 10 is excellent.

Recommendations for developing attention

Now we can finally consider specific ways and means of improving attention. They are perfect for teenagers and adults.

Give yourself extra motivation

Have you noticed that when you are doing something interesting and enjoyable, you do not need to hold your attention on purpose. On the contrary, you cannot tear yourself away from your favorite activity and switch to something else. How can this effect be transferred to all other matters?

The right attitude is very important. Every time before you start doing something, think about why it is important to you and what benefits it will ultimately bring. For example, when starting cleaning, imagine in bright colors how your apartment will shine after a couple of hours. At each stage, reward yourself for the work done. Once you've washed the floors, you can eat some candy and move on.

Concentrate on your feelings

It is very convenient to develop concentration through the senses. During the day, be distracted for 10-15 minutes and concentrate on the sensations of one modality. For example, when getting to work in the morning, look carefully around, try to remember as many details as possible and not miss anything.

During your lunch break, focus on eating. Feel the taste of every piece of food, try to recognize every ingredient. Also take time for auditory and kinesthetic sensations. If you can develop this habit, you will not only improve your concentration, but also begin to live a more conscious life.

Get rid of distractions

Imagine that you suddenly find yourself in a locked, empty room without the Internet, alone with your work laptop. How much do you think your efficiency will increase under such conditions? Scientists from the University of Massachusetts conducted a similar experiment. As a result, the subjects' productivity increased by an average of 25%.

This means that the work that they usually did in 8 hours of the working day, while locked up, they managed to do in 6. It turns out that on average, people waste 2 hours every day to no one knows where.

Observe yourself and determine what you are most often distracted by. I bet it's social media, chatting with colleagues, snacks and cigarettes. Set yourself a limit on these actions and strictly adhere to it. At the same time, you will train your willpower.

Get used to order

We have already found out that our environment greatly influences our ability to concentrate. If your surroundings are chaotic, it will be very difficult for you to concentrate on completing a task. There are two reasons for this.

Firstly, scattered things, dust and dirt will catch your attention like hooks and pull it towards you. The visual analyzer dominates over all others, so the abundance of visual stimuli is always very distracting.

Secondly, you will not be able to get rid of internal discomfort until you put things in order. A mess is always annoying, depressing and oppressive. So before you begin an important task that requires extreme concentration, take some time to clean up.

Meditate

Distractions can be not only external, but also internal. Somehow, for fun, observe the flow of your thoughts. Starting to think about the recipe for the upcoming dinner, after 10 minutes you can easily catch yourself thinking about the design of the hadron collider. And all because we are not used to maintaining discipline and mental hygiene.

Meditation will come to the rescue. Start devoting 15 to 30 minutes a day to it, and within two weeks your mind will become clearer, your consciousness will be clearer, and your attention will be sharper.

Determine your work/rest schedule

There is a method in time management called 90/30. Its essence is that a person should work intently on one task for 90 minutes, and then rest for half an hour. It is believed that 90 minutes is the maximum concentration time that our brain is capable of. Then he begins to spontaneously become distracted.

90 is an approximate value. It varies from person to person. There are people with so-called childlike attention - their brain constantly jumps from one task to another. Working with concentration for an hour and a half is an impossible task for them. Therefore, you should determine the optimal time for yourself.

Next time you're concentrating on something, set a timer. Ignore the first attempts of the brain to be distracted - continue working. When your willpower can no longer cope with the attempts of your consciousness to fly somewhere away from your boring work, record the time. Allow 10 to 30 minutes for rest, depending on the duration of the period of concentration.

Learn to ignore

No matter how paradoxical it may sound, for the development of attention it is very important to turn it off sometimes. Namely, in those moments when it tries to focus on an unwanted stimulus.

For example, you are working on a quarterly report, and a cheerful summer song comes from the window. And now you are already dancing with all your thoughts on vacation on the sea coast with a cocktail in your hands. What kind of report is this?

It is very difficult to deal with emotionally charged stimuli, but it is possible. If possible, it is best to get rid of them: in our case, close the window so as not to hear tempting sounds, or insert earplugs.

If this is not possible, you will have to use your will. Tell yourself that you only have a little time left before your vacation. But if you don’t work hard now, then what awaits you is not the sea coast, but, at best, a sofa and a TV.

Give up the habit of doing things halfway

We very often do things inattentively and half-heartedly. We communicate with children when our minds are busy with work, we eat while staring at the phone screen, we watch a movie, but we think about something else. This is a very harmful practice. Our brain relaxes and thinks that we can’t concentrate at all.

If for some reason you cannot devote yourself completely to your activity, it is better to postpone it. There will be no sense in doing it “halfway” anyway.

Exercise 8

Find hidden names in phrases (example: “Bring coffee to your uncle” - Fedya).

1. This lobster is tasteless and so are the apples. Nanny, give me fresh ones - in orange jelly!

2. The May light doesn’t bother me either, but I feel bad from the early night.

3. Bring some hot peppers from the summer market, please!

4. I forged iron on a bright day.

Mini tips for every day

What else can help develop attention besides special exercises and techniques? Useful habits. They are so simple and easy that you can easily fit them into your life.

1. Develop your powers of observation. Walking down the street, try to notice as many details as possible. Remember what trees grow in your yard, what hairstyle your neighbor Masha has, what color the cars passing by are.
2. Do the same when going to the store. Try to remember how the display cases are located and what products are displayed on them. When you get home, recreate the picture in your mind in all details.
3. When communicating with people, note how they look: what they are wearing, what color their eyes are, what shape their eyebrows are, etc.
4. Stop doing everything “automatically”! Practice mindfulness. Learn to live here and now and enjoy every moment.

Exercise 11

1. Before going to bed today, remember all the faces and objects you encountered during the day.

2. Remember the words addressed to you during the past day. Repeat verbatim what was said.

3. Recall the last meeting, lecture, etc. Remember the speeches, manners and gestures of the speakers, analyze them.

4. Assess your powers of observation and memory.

Why do we get distracted

Let's highlight the main reasons why we find it difficult to concentrate.

More than 100 cool lessons, tests and exercises for brain development

Start developing

Lack of willpower

Willpower in simple words is the ability to control your attention. Concentrate on what is important and cut off what is unimportant. Therefore, by developing willpower, you simultaneously improve the quality of your attention.

Discomfort

Uncomfortable posture, pain, hunger - all these are distractions that draw attention to themselves. You are probably aware that our brain processes body signals first. Therefore, before starting work, try to eliminate all these interferences.

A bunch of unsolved cases

It is very difficult to concentrate when many problems hang over you like a sword of Damocles. Even if you don't think about them at a particular moment in time, they still loom somewhere on the periphery of your consciousness. Start raking them slowly - time management will help you.

Exercise 19

Stanislavsky divided the entire space of attention into three circles:

• large
  - the entire visible and perceived space (in the theater - the entire auditorium);
• middle
  - circle of direct communication and orientation (in the theater - stage with actors);
• small
  - the person himself and the nearest space (in the theater - the artist himself and the nearest space in which he plays a role).

Let's add a fourth circle: the internal psychological space of a person.

1. Imagine that you have a powerful spotlight in your head.

2. Select a point in the large circle and a point on the border of the small and inner circle.

3. Swish the beam of the spotlight from one point to another and back. At the same time, “bite” extremely tenaciously into the selected points. Oleg Valerievich Kozlovsky, expert on modern teaching methods. www.elitarium.ru[

See also:

Memory training: Memory School Game

6 tips on how to develop intuition

What is attention

Attention is one of the main human cognitive functions. In psychology it has a special role. This is a kind of filter through which all surrounding information passes. For clarity, it can be compared to the beam of a flashlight or spotlight, which focuses light on a specific object, leaving everything else out of sight.

The quality of other cognitive functions – thinking and memory – depends on the quality of attention. It happens that we scold ourselves for forgetfulness, we try with all our might to develop memory, while it has absolutely nothing to do with it. It’s just that at the moment of perceiving the information, our attention wandered somewhere in the vastness of space, so nothing entered our memory.

At some moments, failure to concentrate can cost us our lives. For example, while driving a car.

There are professions that require extreme care: air traffic controller, train driver, watchmaker. They become not some geniuses who have ideal attention by nature, but ordinary people. If they managed to bring the skill of concentration to perfection, then you and I can do it too. Regular training will help you “pump up” your attention muscle and thereby increase your productivity.

Online trainers for developing attention

There are many services on the Internet for developing brain functions, including attention. I'll introduce you to four of my favorites. All of them are designed according to the same principle - some of the simulators are available for free, but you will have to pay for extended access.

Vikium

Vikium is the most popular training service for brain development today. There you will find exercises and games to develop attention, memory, thinking, and logic. Today there are more than forty of them. The exercises are quite simple, so you can easily fit them into your daily schedule, doing them, for example, during breaks between work.

Bitreynik

On Bitreynik you can focus only on developing attention, or you can train all cognitive functions in a complex. In addition to the exercises themselves, there are many interesting features, for example, tournaments among participants, tests. The tasks are different: some are simple, and some are quite complex.

BrainApps

On the BrainApps service you will find 52 simulators, 18 of which are aimed at training concentration skills. Among them are Schulte tables, tasks for sorting, comparing and searching for shapes. Also on the site you can take various courses, including those on developing attention.

CogniFit

The creators of CogniFit claim that with the help of the service you can not only improve brain performance, develop logic, attention and memory, but also correct some disorders, such as ADHD, insomnia, multiple sclerosis and even the consequences of a stroke. There are programs for both children and adults, as well as a special section for health professionals.

Useful literature

I really like exercises to develop attention - they are simple and unobtrusive, but at the same time exciting. And most importantly, the effect comes quite quickly. If you, like me, want to study seriously, I advise you to purchase special books. They describe various methods for developing attention and present a wide selection of exercises.

For adults:

1. “Theories of attention” Alexander Shevtsov
2. “#The power of focus. Metaphysical law of success” Niko Bauman
3. “The brain is in good shape. Workbook for training memory and attention” Tetsuya Miyamoto
4. “How to quickly concentrate attention” Ilya Melnikov
5. “How to improve memory and develop attention in 4 weeks” Tatyana Lagutina

For children:

1. “School of Attention” Natalia Pylaeva, Tatyana Akhutina
2. “350 exercises for developing logic and attention” Olga Uzorova, Elena Nefedova
3. “Development of attention and memory with a neuropsychologist” Alexander Sobolev
4. The Big Book of Attention Training
5. “We train attention. Simple exercises and games” by A. M. Kruglova

For a detailed review of the literature, see the article “Books on developing attention.”