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A Man's Life, Personal Development

Your Concentration Training Program: 11 Exercises That Will

Strengthen Your Attention

In this series on mastering your attention, we have emphasized the fact that attention is not just the ability
to focus on a single task without being distracted, but in fact is comprised of several different elements
that must be effectively managed.
But this doesnt mean that single-minded focus is not of paramount importance. Yesterday we compared
managing your different kinds of attention to being the supreme commander of your mind you must be
able to deftly maneuver and deploy your units to various battles. But good management can only get you
so far; to win the war on distraction, the absolute strength of your voluntary attention your focus foot
soldiers greatly matters.
Research has shown that individuals who can sustain their attention for long periods of time perform
better on all sorts of cognitive challenges than those who cannot. A man with a scatter-shot attention span

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will only be able to experience one plane of existence; he can skim across the surface of the worlds vast
knowledge and wisdom, but is unable to dive deeper and discover the treasures below. The man with an
iron-clad focus can do both; he is the boat captain and the pearl diver and the world is truly his oyster.
If you have a goal to learn and understand as much about the world as you possibly can before you die,
strengthening your power of concentration is not an option, its a necessity.

Think of Your Mind as a Muscle

Last time we used the analogy of being supreme commander of your mind to explain attention
management; when it comes to attention strengthening, wed encourage you to think of your mind as a
muscle. The parallels between strengthening your body and strengthening your mind are in fact so close
that its really not so much an analogy as a description of reality.
Your physical muscles and your attention muscles both have a limited amount of strength at any given
time, their stamina and power can either atrophy from inactivity or strengthen from vigorous, purposeful
exercise, and they require rest and recovery after theyve been intensely exerted.
You get the same feeling of internal dread/doubt right before you begin an intense workout the one that
says Im not sure I want to do this as you do right before you decide whether or not youre going to
read a long article, and in both cases you have to set your mind, bite down, and get going with it.
Just as you can hit a wall in a tough workout where you think you cant do one more rep, in the middle of
reading a long article your mind will want to quit and surf to another tab. In both cases, if you tell
yourself to dig deeper, youll be surprised how much more strength and focus you actually have left in the
tank.
And while everyones looking for cool new secrets for how to build both their body and mind
shortcuts and hacks heretofore undiscovered the truth is that strengthening our physical and mental
muscles comes down to plain, good old fashioned, highly unsexy work. Gaining strength in either area is
ultimately about eating right, getting ample sleep, and engaging in challenging daily exercise.
So put on your lifting belt and chalk up your cranium. Were going to hit the mental gym and turn your
focus into a beast. Below, youll find your brains workout plan.

Your Concentration Training Program: 11 Exercises That Will Strengthen Your

Attention
Youll never get big muscles from sitting on the couch all day, and youll never develop amazing powers
of concentration from exclusively reading Buzzfeed and watching Tosh.O. Your mind muscles, just like
your physical muscles, need resistance; they need challenges that stretch their limits and in so doing,
grow their focus fibers. Below we outline exercises that will beef up your focus so that you can start
lifting heavier and heavier cognitive loads.
1. Increase the strength of your focus gradually. If you decide you want to physically get in shape, but
are starting at ground zero, the worst thing you can do is to throw yourself into an extreme training
program youll end up injured, discouraged, or both, and youll quit before you even really get started.
Likewise, if your attention span is currently quite flabby, its best to slowly build up the weight you ask it
to lift. In this series weve mentioned trying the Pomodoro Method in which you work for, say, 45
minutes straight and then allow yourself a 15-minute break. But for many of us, 45 minutes might as well
be a mind marathon!

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So start out with a pretty easy goal and work your way up from there. Set a timer for 5 minutes and focus
completely on your work/reading for that time period. Then take a 2-minute break before going at it again
for another 5 minutes. Each day, add another 5 minutes to your focused work time, along with an
additional 2 minutes to your break time. In 9 days, you should be able to work for 45 minutes straight
before you allow yourself an 18-minute break. Once you get comfortable with that set-up, you can work
to lengthen your focus sessions a little, while shortening your break times.
2. Create a distraction to-do list. Because the internet has made any bit of information instantly
accessible, we tend to want to look something up the moment it crosses our mind. I wonder what the
weather will be like tomorrow? What year did that movie come out? I wonder whats new in my
Facebook feed? Consequently, well toggle away from what were working on the instant these questions
or thoughts pop into our minds. Problem is, once we get distracted, it takes on average 25(!) minutes to
return to our original task. Plus, shifting our attention back and forth drains its strength.
So to stay on task, whenever something you want to check out pops into your head, just write it down on
a piece of paper next to you (or perhaps in Evernote for you tech types), and promise yourself youll be
able to look it up once your focusing session is over and your break time has arrived.
3. Build your willpower. Voluntary attention and willpower are intimately entwined. Our willpower
allows us to deliberately ignore distractions while staying focused on the task at hand. It would serve your
attention span well to review our in-depth article on strengthening your willpower.
4. Meditate. Not only does meditation help keep you cool, calm, and collected, research has also shown
again and again that mindfulness meditation can boost your attention span significantly.
In one study, 140 volunteers took part in an eight-week course in meditation training. After the eight
weeks, all the volunteers showed measurable improvements in attention span, as well as other executive
mental functions.
You dont have to spend your days meditating in a monastery to take advantage of its attention-boosting
power. Research has shown that just 10 to 20 minutes of meditation a day will do the trick. Whats more,
youll even see improvements in your attention after just four days.
So if you want the power to focus on your studies for hours at a time, start your mornings off just
focusing on your breath for a few minutes.
5. Practice mindfulness throughout the day. In addition to dedicating 10 to 20 minutes a day to
mindfulness meditation, attention experts recommend finding opportunities to practice mindfulness
throughout your day. Mindfulness is simply focusing completely on what youre doing, slowing down,
and observing all of the physical and emotional sensations you are experiencing in that moment.
You can practice mindfulness when you eat as you take time to really chew your food and concentrate on
its flavors and texture. You can practice mindfulness when you shave; as you smell your shaving cream,
note the pleasure of applying a warm lather to your face, and slowly drag the razor across your stubble.
Incorporating short sessions of mindfulness throughout your day will strengthen and expand your
attention span for the times when you really need it.
Mindfulness can also help you push back against distractions as they arise. If youre working on a task
and feel that restless itch to go do something else, think to yourself, Be here now. In that moment, bring
your awareness to your body and your breath. After a few seconds of focusing on your breath, youll
notice that the distraction is no longer present and that youre ready to get back to work.

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6. Exercise (your body). Not only can you compare exercising your mind to exercising your body, doing
the latter actually directly benefits the former. Researchers have found that students who engaged in
moderate physical exercise before taking a test that measured attention spans performed better than
students who didnt exercise. The researchers found that exercise primarily helps our brains ability to
ignore distractions, although they arent exactly sure why. I would venture to say that the discipline it
takes to push through the pain of a workout strengthens the same supply of willpower that we use to
ignore the itch of distractions in order to keep working/focusing.
7. Memorize stuff. Weve talked about memorization on the site before. Besides being a cool bar trick
and providing you a fount of poems to recite at the drop of a hat, memorizing stuff is an excellent way to
exercise your mind muscles. Make it a goal to memorize a poem or a verse of scripture each week.
What About Attention Training Games?
Brain training games have received a lot of press in recent years. Youve probably seen
commercials for Lumosity or Brain Age on Nintendo DS. The games creators claim that
spending just a few minutes a day playing can improve your attention, memory, and mental
agility. However, the research on the veracity of these claims is divided.
Some studies indicate that brain training games can help improve attention in children with
ADHD or in the elderly, but that they dont benefit young, healthy adults.
Other studies show that while certain brain training games can boost attention levels, those
gains dont crossover to other areas of life. In other words, brain training games can help
people pay better attention and do better at brain training games, but they wont help people
pay better attention in class or while studying.
A recent study showed a certain type of brain training game called n-back can improve
working memory (an important aspect of attention) and that improvement can crossover to
other cognitive challenges.
So what does this all mean? The verdict is still out on whether these brain games will
definitively increase attention spans and further research needs to be done. It wont hurt to try
them out as part of your attention training program, but include the other suggestions outlined
here as well.
8. Read long stuff slowly. Fight the TL;DR culture. With the rise of tablets, e-readers, and
smartphones, some studies indicate that reading of e-content in general has gone up nearly 40%. This is a
good thing, right? Youd think so, except that Slate recently did some research with the help of website
analytics company Chartbeart that determined that only a paltry 5% of readers who start an article online
will actually finish it. Whats more, 38% of readers never scroll beyond the first few paragraphs. So to say
that reading in general has gone up would be misleading. What were actually doing is more scrolling,
and less engaging.
At the same time, were reading less books; a recent study showed that 25% of Americans didnt read a
single book last year.
This is truly a shame. While long definitely does not automatically equal better, there are certain complex
ideas that are impossible to condense into short list posts and require an entire book (or several books) to
flesh out. To skip something simply because it is long is to miss out on a whole world of knowledge
available only to those willing to dive deeper. Theres definitely a place for skimming online, and learning
a little about a lot. But you should also make room for plunging into a few subjects whole hog.

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If you havent read a book in awhile, I challenge you to pick one up tonight. Really try to dig into it.
Learn how to read a book properly; itll change your life.
Besides books, make an effort to read one or two long articles a week. Longform journalism, as its
called, is experiencing a renaissance of sorts, and the amount of quality, in-depth content available is at an
all-time high. A few of my favorite sources of longform articles:
Longreads.com
Longform.org
Arts and Letters Daily
The Economist
The New Yorker
The Art of Manliness (Always strives to publish comprehensive posts that are as useful as possible.
Also, I hear its founder has a glorious mustache.)
9. Stay curious. The more curious you are about the world, the greater the stamina of your concentration
will be when it comes to any endeavor. William James suggests a simple experiment to test how staying
curious about the object of your attention can prolong your ability to stay focused on it:
Try to attend steadfastly to a dot on the paper or on the wall. You presently find that one or
the other of two things has happened: either your field of vision has become blurred, so that
you now see nothing distinct at all, or else you have involuntarily ceased to look at the dot in
question, and are looking at something else. But, if you ask yourself successive questions
about the dot,how big it is, how far, of what shape, what shade of color, etc.; in other
words, if you turn it over, if you think of it in various ways, and along with various kinds of
associates,you can keep your mind on it for a comparatively long time. This is what the
genius does, in whose hands a given topic coruscates and grows.
Charles Darwin was a master of this concept. His contemporaries marveled at his ability to spend an
entire day just staring at animals and plants. Darwins secret was his unflagging curiosity he could
discover more and more about a single object by homing in on various details, examining it in different
ways, asking new questions. Bit by bit he would peel back its layers.
10. Practice attentive listening. Focus isnt just useful for intellectual endeavors. Its also an essential
interpersonal skill. The ability to be fully present with a loved one or friend builds your rapport, intimacy,
and trust and with them. At the same time, making an effort to focus all your energy on someone else
strengthens your concentration muscles overall. Its win-win. So next time youre talking with your main
squeeze, put away your phone and listen as attentively as possible.
11. Perform concentration exercises. The above exercises not only boost your focus, but offer other
benefits as well. Every once in a while, however, its good to do some exercises that are aimed purely at
boosting your concentration. Here are twelve to try.

Series Conclusion
Modernity has given us a lot of comforts and conveniences, but it has also unleashed a torrent of stimuli
competing for our attention. To live a truly flourishing life amidst this cacophony of distractions,
mastering your attention is key. At the end of your life, who youve become, what youve learned and
accomplished, and whos there at the end with you will be the sum total of what you chose to pay
attention to each year, day, and hour of your life. Will a series of cat videos flash before your eyes? Or
will you look back on the deep conversations you had with your family and friends, the books that
changed your life, and the little details you discovered in all the places you visited?

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We hope our series on attention has gotten you to think about this increasingly precious commodity in a
new light, as well as inspired you to take steps to improve it. Youll be amazed how much your life can
improve just by paying attention to your attention.
Brett & Kate McKay
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