Fix your attention span
a quick guide
A summary to this video by @aevytv.
Why to fix attention?
The ability to focus, be creative, and being bored are innate to human beings and probably the very reasons they are powerful. If we lose our ability to channel our attention, we risk losing all these qualities that make us interesting and useful, and that’s no bueno.
It makes doing simple low dopamine tasks like reading books, going through an assignment, even working out a great challenge to push through.
Personally, I would like myself better if I’m more productive and consuming media consciously.
How to improve attention span?
0. Accept that this is a problem
And this needs to be addressed by taking some action.
1. Environment dictates our behaviour
It is quite unlikely for you to pick your phone up if it was in a different room than compared to right beside you when you’re working.
The idea is to make difficult tasks and tasks involving long times of deep work that give delayed gratification as easy to do and the path to instant gratification tasks like scrolling reels should be filled with a lot of resistance.
2. Progressive overload
Just like we train our muscles in the gym, we can in a way train our attention skills by starting small and gradually increasing the workload with time.
For example, one could start with 5 minutes / day of reading a book, then in the second week 10 minutes, then 15 and so on.
3. Be bored
Take out time in a day, say 30 - 60 mins, where you do nothing and are away from your gadgets.
This simple act will somewhere allow your mind to reset its dopamine levels itself, and soon even a conversation with a friend might feel joyful.
4. Conscious consumption
Add blockers and extra steps to sites you don’t wanna visit (reels, shorts) adding more resistance avoiding mindless consumption (brainrot).
Watch videos, series and movies to it’s full. After watching a video, like this one, take some time to sit and digest what you learnt and, if seems useful, make notes jotting down any useful bit.