flashlight effort
i watched a youtube video the other day on why you don't have energy throughout the day. he pretty much used a flashlight as a example to represent attention. he goes on saying the issue is the spread of attention rather than the actual beam of light. well atless, that is how i intrepurted it.
so, if you imagine you brain as a flashlight. there is only so many different places you can shine the light of focus. most time, like any human, you have different thoughts that flow through you from stressful experience, urgent tasks, or other issues that might arise. these all are getting the shine on at different degrees of power. the crux of the issue is how to remove the shine on irrelevant tasks and focux our limited light on the problem in front of us.
this is the part which i have absolutely no idea how to do. I've been experimenting with using a part of my mind to focus when reading and listening to lectures. i think to focus there is two main parts. one is the physical activity, this it the part that most people do ie reading, listening, and other more obvious visual queues. the issue when what is happening in the mind and how we use it during these moments.
so, take an example of lectures. what i do is listen/watch the lecture speak which is so boring that i sleep. why is that? although my physical is activity paying attention my mental/mind is drifting off into the world of whatever else is more interesting. so, what i do is activate the mind in two ways. one, is visual, i imagine a map in my mind and i make relations and imagine a light on the location of the map where he is talking about. i try and come up with more relations and organize throughout the lecture. every so often i update my onenote/drawing iPad with the new map. it's super tiring but i think this is the most ideal way to focusing in class/ingeneral.
to sum up, to use both the physical and mental resources on one particular subject or area of focus. shine all resources on that particular location and you won't fall asleep or drift. try it with reading it works too but imagine the story instead.