A scientist’s guide to life: How to concentrate
Distraction isn’t all bad. If we get distracted at work, it’s not great for productivity, but distraction has a positive side. Distraction is vital for survival, but it can also be helpful in many areas of life, such as health, education, etc.
But some people say music helps them to concentrate
Research doesn’t back this up
- If you ask people to predict how well they will do on a task while listening to music they like, they tend to overestimate it
- Liked and disliked music tend to impair performance equally
- You can’t tell if it’s the music you like or not
Turn off those notifications
If you want to concentrate for a long time, don’t make life unnecessarily hard
- Turn off the notifications on your phone, or switch the phone off.
- Have a coffee. Take regular breaks, and hope that you’re concentrating on something interesting
Has lockdown impaired our concentration?
For people with busy households, there may be more distractions when working from home, but it is too soon to say if there is any long-term effect on concentration.
- It could just be that we are still adjusting to new ways of working in different environments.
Learn to concentrate better
There’s an enormous amount of variation in people’s ability to concentrate.
- Those with better working memory – the ability to store and manipulate information short term – seem to do best, but we can all improve by practicing by doing certain tasks that involve working memory