How to focus?

September 16, 2006 9:25 PM

How can I compartmentalize my thoughts/life in order to be productive?

Let me start by saying that I suffer from no disorders such as depression or OCD or ADD or anything that might cause me such problems as I experience.
I have always (since high school) had a problem compartmentalizing my thoughts and this causes me to not be able to accomplish simple goals sometimes. I cannot seem to separate my emotions from my actions. Even if I am suffering from the most minute emotional stress, I seem to focus on that so much that I cannot seem to get much work done.
My most common example involves being preoccupied with love interests which renders me unable to be productive, which I find to be presently relevant: I am involved in a casual relationship that really is quite unstressful, but I find that the tiniest concerns overpower my mind to the point that I can't get myself to focus on studying the GRE. Today I just sat around thinking about romantic mountain views and essentially daydreaming and I couldn't manage to retain any information studying.
This has been a common pattern in my life-- if everything isn't totally in order, everything is thrown out of whack. I can't push out distracting thoughts in order to focus on pertinent tasks.
How do you do it? How do you get work done when you have other things going on in your head?
Feel free to recommend books, essays, anecdotes, personal tips, anything-- I just need to get my study on without fighting my (sub)conscious.

posted by greta simone to grab bag (12 comments total)

Getting Things Done.
posted by disillusioned at 9:34 PM on September 16, 2006 [1 favorite]

Getting Things Done

Seconded.
posted by gregschoen at 10:00 PM on September 16, 2006

Writing helps me "address" an issue so that I can address the rest of my life.

Otherwise a counselor may be able to help you find strategies for emotional release.

That said, are you sure ADD has been ruled out? Check out this link.
posted by mynameismandab at 10:02 PM on September 16, 2006

I find that I often dwell upon or even cause emotional/relationship drama when I'm procrastinating. If you think you may be doing something similar, the first and most important thing you need to do is realize what you're doing. Don't stop and think about it for a second and then go back to the drama. Step back, instead, and call a ceasefire on whatever drama you've spawned.

Then go do some work. Once you get into it, it's usually not so bad.
posted by limeonaire at 10:06 PM on September 16, 2006

Daydreaming is a huge obstacle to productivity. But many people view it as innocuous.

The solution lies in recognizing this daydreaming as a negative thing. If you're ambivalent about it (i.e. you're not fullly conscious of its negative impact whil you're doing it), you're going to have a tough time stopping. Condition yourself to believe it's a bad thing by making yourself fully aware of how much it affects your grades. Reward yourself by spending more time with your partner only if you have successfully focused on your work and not daydreamed.

Also, are you sure you don't have ADD?
posted by lunchbox at 11:21 PM on September 16, 2006

Mindfulness Meditation

A couple years ago I took an eight week class based on the book by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness. The lessons and practice helped me learn how to calm myself... which then transfered into being able to focus more effectively.
posted by chase at 11:39 PM on September 16, 2006

I'm taking the GRE tomorrow, I'm in the same boat. I've had the same issues focusing. The thing I've found most helpful: unplug the internet. You don't need it to study.

Second. Start up the test prep software from ets.org or the disc that came with your book. Keep the disc in your CDROM at all times. It's all fullscreen software, so it will prevent distractions like askmetafilter. Once it's going, it's remarkably hard to just quit. Good luck.
posted by fake at 11:54 PM on September 16, 2006

Think about rearranging your schedule so that your study periods coincide with your most productive times. This obviously may involve some compromises with your personal life especially if you concentrate best in the evenings but I do find that sometimes it's the only thing that works.
posted by teleskiving at 3:03 AM on September 17, 2006

I have similar problems but have been diagnosed with ADD. Still many doctors suggest it's related to lady hormones and want to switch up my birth control. This advice is not that helpful for me, but whatever.
posted by shownomercy at 7:56 AM on September 17, 2006

The Palm Pilot is amazing for this. Get an old one so you can't screw around with it too much.
posted by phrontist at 10:08 AM on September 17, 2006

I don't see how an organisational system like Getting Things Done is particularly applicable to the problem of daydreaming.

When you say that you get preoccupied with thoughts, is it that:

(a) you become so preoccupied that you literally forget that you're supposed to be working, and only realise hours later? or
(b) you're constantly very aware that you should be working, but you can't seem to get started, because it's much more easy and pleasant to be thinking about mountain views?

These are two separate problems. The solution to (a) is a to make a schedule so that you know what you should be doing at different times of the day. The short-term solution to (b) is procrastination tricks like the ten-minute dash; the long-term solution is to find work that you love to do.

In both cases, you're finding a way to turn something fuzzy like 'I should work' into something more concrete, routine and regular. Or, in other words, the mere concept of 'doing work' isn't something that you should have to expend the creative power of your brain on. You need to turn it into something that can be dealt with on an automatic, don't-have-to-think-about-it, it's-just-what-I-do-as-part-of-the-day level in your brain, much like the way you brush your teeth and have breakfast every morning. Schedules, tricks and routines are a route to this.
posted by chrismear at 1:37 PM on September 17, 2006 [1 favorite]

Find some way to remind yourself every few minutes that you should be working.
Also, don't try to work on the same thing for hours on end. Break up all your work into smaller tasks and focus on gettting one done at a time.
There's a construction site next door to me, and I find I work better when there's work going on because every once in a while the noise will snap me out of my daydreams and remind me to get back to work.
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 4:14 PM on September 17, 2006