As I sit down to write this post, iTunes is playing in the background, my dog is barking at something she sees outside and I think the beeper on the washing machine just sounded. Give it another minute or so and my husband will most certainly yell something up the stairs to me. And I don’t even have children! (And I know that they bring a whole different level of noise into your life.)
How hard it is to concentrate in this crazy world so full of distractions.
It was a comment by Lorrie Moore when I saw her speak last month that got me thinking about concentration – or in my case, the lack thereof. When Moore was asked how she achieves such an amazing level of detail in her stories, she attributed a big part of it to “deep concentration.”
That got me thinking: when was the last time I really and truly concentrated?
I don’t know.
In chemistry, concentration is the measure of how much a given substance is mixed with another substance. (Wikipedia) What an apt description. Something else out there is getting “mixed into” whatever it is our brain is trying to focus on. That other substance could be background music or Twitter or errands or just about anything else, but if Lorrie Moore is right, I’m short-changing myself – and my writing projects – by not at least trying to give myself over to true and complete concentration.
Maybe there are some of you out there who can find a quiet room and can slip easily into a mindful state of focus, but I’m not one of them. It’s not often that I slip into that wonderfully elusive state of ‘flow’ as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote about. I have so much to do – and so much more that I want to do – often, I’m thinking about what I’m going to do next even when I’m trying my best to focus on one thing. If I’m writing a blog post, I’m thinking that I’ll go to work on my novel plotting next. If I’m working on that novel plotting, I’m thinking that soon I’ll curl up with a book to read for a while.
How could even a small dose of concentration not help me to be a better, more productive writer?
Concentration likely means something different to each of us. To me, it’s a quiet space in addition to a quiet mind. I’m not going to be able to concentrate at Starbucks. And I must admit the very idea of that kind silence (and the expectations therein) scares me a little.
I know we all need to forge our own relationship with concentration, but here’s my plan for bringing a dose of concentration into my life – hopefully to stay.
- Start small. I know I can’t expect to jump into prolonged periods of concentration so I’m starting small – 5 minutes or so at a time – and I’ll gradually build up longer time durations from there. It’s like meditating – no one sits for hours on end their very first time.
- Make a list. Thankfully, not every project or task I have on my list requires this type of deep concentration. So in order to best use this dedicated time I’m going to keep a “what I need to concentrate on” list.
- Commit to concentrate. I’m committing to making this deep concentration a part of my life.
What’s your relationship with concentration? Does it come easy for you? Please share your thoughts.
lara
My Story Writer
www.mywritingsoftware.com