Thursday, October 08, 2009

Free your mind so you can focus on one task at a time.

Our brains are wired to focus on one task at time. Professor Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at the world-renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology, carried out a study whereby he scanned volunteers’ heads while they performed different tasks. He found that when there was a lot of visual objects in front of volunteers, only one or two objects tended to activate the brain. This means that the volunteers could only focus on one or two objects at any given time.

Todays tip to free your mind:

1. Clear your space
Tidy desk - tidy mind, that's my motto. It's a strange thing but when our work desks are cleared, our minds seem clearer and become more focused on the task at hand. If your desk is very untidy and has paper, reports, books, magazines, stats lying all over it, your brain momentarily picks this up when you are not working. So when you get to working you could be thinking 'I've got that report to finish, I need to finish those stats, I need to show Steve that article in the magazine'. We still have lots of information to contend with in our minds. Whereas if our desk is completely free from clutter we are much more likely to focus and get the task at hand completed. This is also true at home, tidy house - tidy mind.

With Life Coaching and Motivational Speaking I focus on teaching my clients how to organize and tidy their life so they can clear their minds. For some it is a simple task, for others not so much, the value of this exercise is underestimated!

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