Mohamed Salah
The rhythm of life made attention briefly and try to focus on several tasks simultaneously (Multitasking) is so common that some are no longer able to sit quiet for a moment giving their mind some comfort, without opening their phone applications or following social media sites.
Research has confirmed that hyperactivity and continuous concentration with a barrage of information may affect brain development and damage the brain. According to a study by Stanford University researcher Clifford Nass in 2009, it was proven that people who switch between different tasks were less mentally focused, and those who stopped distracting them all the time did better.
In 2001 a team of researchers at the University of Michigan concluded that rapid movement of interests reduces achievement by 40%, in addition to that it is done through mental functions that may take less than a second, which is sufficient time to threaten the life of a car driver who decided to divert his attention from the phone to the road. .
These conclusions make an urgent need for a "diet of the mind" to overcome the mental exhaustion resulting from the glut of information, and this is what the American blogger Mark Manson touched on in an article entitled "The Focus Diet".
Not for lethargy and mental weakness
Just as we need to follow a "nutritional diet," the lifestyle of the twenty-first century requires us to follow a "mental diet." We are while working, driving, sitting with friends, eating or lying in bed, browsing social media applications, exchanging text messages, and watching videos.
These things dispersed our focus and made the work that had to be done in 20 minutes need more time to finish, after the ideas cord was cut off and the quality decreased due to the review and amendment, and a state of anxiety over the thing that was not completed in the best way, and preoccupation and thinking at the same time in Those new publications and news that we missed and did not read.
These distractions not only impede us from performing our work, but also make it more difficult and prevent us from accomplishing it, and make us dive into that digital whirlpool that makes us feel that accomplishing anything important is almost impossible. Which means that the constant and cumbersome impact of social networks is behind our lethargy, diminishing focus and increasing mental impairment, anxiety and depression, which requires us to make a physical effort and exercise to prepare our minds to obtain information and divert attention from what it distracts.
Target
The more trivial things that grab our attention, the more difficult it is to choose what to focus on. Therefore our first and most important goal of the focus diet should be: reducing the distractions we are exposed to. Just as the food diet begins with limiting food, the focus diet begins with limiting the consumption of information and stopping dealing with everything that is wrong and hurts our minds and feelings, just as fast foods harm our bodies.
So the second goal of a focus diet is: to find nourishing information sources and healthy relationships to enhance our lives with. The basis of the diet is to provide quality or quality over the quantity, so that the mind adapts and becomes healthy.
The steps
1- Determining reliable, nutritious, and useful information that encourages thinking, as well as identifying healthy relationships in which face-to-face communication is characterized by permanence, mutual trust and cooperation for growth.
2- Stay away from trivial superficial information that stimulates addiction to consumption patterns, as well as away from the relationships that are with people who harass you and make you resent yourself and the world.
3- Making the priority for prolonged content such as books, audio clips, long articles and documentaries, and the rest of the materials that refine our focus and take time to make us think deeply and expand our research adequately.
4- Taking prolonged content even in entertainment, watching documentaries about our favorite game is better than wasting time in sports videos, listening to a more interesting music album than repeating a famous clip, and so on.
5- Stopping, sending e-mails must be a consciously chosen activity, which takes a certain time period to achieve the maximum effectiveness, and not an obsessive-compulsive behavior in which we refresh the page every 30 seconds.
6- Deleting useless sites and applications, making social media accounts with their follow-ups and friendships at the minimum level, getting out of the Twitter page whirlpool, then updating the Facebook page, then the Instagram page, returning to the Twitter page update and so on.
7- Choosing good sources of information, relationships, and following up on the current events, so that Wikipedia is at the top of the list, through which enough information can be obtained.
8- Leave the phone outside the office during the day and outside the bedroom at night , and pay attention and focus on everything that adds value to life, along with sports, entertainment and relaxation.