Concentration please!
This is how you find the right focus in your job
Created: 06/09/2022, 15:11
The highs and lows of concentration during the working day can be cleverly used for corresponding tasks.
© Christin Klose/dpa-tmn
Concentration is the basis of performance.
It's the breaks in between that get your body and mind fit.
What does this mean for the organization of our working days?
When there is a lot to do, you need calm and concentration to deal with the tasks at hand.
Instead, your mind is constantly wandering, playing games on your cell phone or chatting with colleagues.
Why is it so difficult to stay focused - and what can you do about it?
The overview shows where you can turn the screws.
Clever use of ups and downs at work:
Concentration is the ability to focus on one task at a time and ignore everything else.
"However, maintaining this state for more than two hours at a time is grossly unrealistic," says the neuroscientist, biochemist and book author Henning Beck.
The ability to
concentrate
is subject to fluctuations because nerve cells need time to adapt to different stimuli.
Instead of trying to be focused all the time, learn to use the ups and downs of your ability to focus wisely.
"It's similar to sports, where you always need to alternate between exertion and relaxation," says Beck.
Likewise, our brain needs relaxation phases in between to regenerate and process what we have learned.
"That's why working in intervals, where you alternate between high and low concentration, is actually best." Light work can be done during the low phase.
Clever break management:
Breaks
are also
time well invested, because afterwards you can continue working with more concentration, says Beck.
The coach and author Thomas Mangold specifically recommends taking a short break of five minutes every hour to stretch, relax your eyes and brain.
"You shouldn't stare at a screen, if possible, not even at your cell phone."
Combining the
lunch break with exercise
can also help.
Important: "Your head needs to be able to switch off from time to time, so you shouldn't necessarily consume podcasts, videos or newspaper articles," advises Mangold.
Pay attention to the biorhythm:
Early risers or night owls
: Biorhythms vary from person to person and influence the times at which you can concentrate particularly well.
Some people are more productive in the morning, while others are more productive in the evening.
"You can find out by keeping a diary or a list about it for a while and then use it for yourself," advises Mangold.
However, you can hardly really change your biorhythm.
“You can train yourself to a different rhythm, but that is extremely tedious and not necessarily recommended.
It makes more sense to adapt the daily routine to the biorhythm,” says Mangold.
Unfortunately, neither our work nor school systems are perfectly adapted to human
biorhythms
, which explains why we often find it so difficult to get up in the morning.
"However, on average, our ability to concentrate is particularly high two hours after getting up," says Mangold.
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Sleep and Diet:
Sleep
and diet
are also important factors that affect our ability to concentrate.
“The body recovers during sleep and needs intervals of 1.5 hours for this.
So it's best to set your alarm clock at intervals of 6 hours, 7.5 hours or 9 hours and stick to it regularly," says Mangold.
Planning meals is also helpful.
Our brain uses about 20 percent of the calories we take in, and processing them takes energy.
According to Mangold, it is therefore better to avoid large meals before tasks that require a high level of concentration.
Stress and Emotions:
If you are excited, your ability to concentrate falls flat, regardless of whether you are happy or sad.
"Emotions are automated reactions to stimuli and are used to process a specific stimulus particularly quickly," says Beck.
This effort then overrides everything else in the brain.
Stress
, on the other hand, increases the ability to concentrate temporarily, but be careful: "Stress is a biochemical blinder that narrows our perception in order to deal with a situation that is perceived as threatening as quickly as possible," says the neuroscientist.
That is why we act particularly decisively and quickly in stressful situations.
However, this does not always benefit us in our jobs or studies.
"In an exam or presentation, it's not the content, it's the situation that causes the stress, so the stress overshadows our ability to focus on the content." to accustom.
Keeping calm still helps our ability to focus the most.
dpa
