Focus

I don't know when this started to be a problem for me, but I'm sure it's gotten worse over time. I've said for years that I have the attention span of a gnat. Now I'm not even sure it's that long.

I spend more time on Facebook than ever before and I just joined Twitter yesterday. While entertaining and useful in keeping me connected with friends, I'd compare these social networking tools to being in the back of a kindergarten class with the ADHD kids.

I don't know if any of the rest of you (and when I say you, I mean writers or writing students)have problems trying to follow the butt-in-chair rule that gets you to that much-to-be-desired Zen place, but I'm betting that I am not alone.

So here are some things that have worked for me, or at least made it a little better. I'd say I have roughly doubled my writing output by following these tips.

1) This will sound weird, but change your eating habits. There is no doubt that what you put in your mouth affects your ability to concentrate. To learn how important this is, read The Ultramind Solution: Fixing Your Broken Brain by Healing Your Body First by Mark Hyman, M.D. What Dr. Hyman says in this book was not new to me, since I've been studying natural medicine as a hobby for a long time. I knew a lot already about how good certain things were for my body, but I never quite realized the impact nutrition and things like hormonal balance had on my brain. I'd like to summarize it for you, but you won't really get it until you read the book.

Best tips: Balance your omega 3 to omega 6 ratio and eat more plants.

2) Awakened Minds, Inc. makes these CDs using binaural beats, which basically means they play a different tone in each one of your ears (using headphones) and this triggers changes in your brain wave state. If you took psychology in college, you may remember that your brain waves change with different mental states from deep sleep to active problem solving and several varieties in between. By changing your brain waves, you can crate better focus or creativity. It sounds like mumbo jumbo, but it was recommended to me by a doctor that I trusted. And these cds are not that expensive. I know about another system, but it costs a lot more. As a starving artist, I'm fine with cheap stuff that works. Anyway, one of these CDs is called Focus. It plays a rain sound (and now I think they sell the same one with an ocean wave sound instead)so you don't consciously hear the different tones. I am amazed though that when I just can't concentrate, I put that CD on and listen to it with headphones and it makes a dramatic difference. Basically, it's the difference between me goofing around on my computer and actually putting words on the page.

3) Caffeine does me wrong. I mean, it helps me stay awake and all, but it also increases my blood pressure, keeps me from sleeping when I want to, makes me tired the next day. I try never to drink caffeinated beverages any more. So what I've started doing instead is taking sub-lingual B vitamins. I buy a liquid called B Total that gives me a big dose of Bs. B vitamins are water-soluble, so they get filtered out of your bloodstream by your kidneys. Unless you have some health issue that prohibits it (and I don't know of one--maybe a B vitamin allergy?), you can safely take a lot more B vitamins that the RDA. They do a lot of good things, like giving you more energy, focus, and helping your heart and nervous system. B vitamins, especially B 12 get more difficult to absorb as you age or if you have digestive difficulties and take antacids or proton pump inhibitors. (If you want to read more about this, just google it.) So chances are, you could use more B 12 if you're over 40, take those stomach meds, or if your a vegetarian because the primary sources of B 12 are animal-based foods.

d) Also, from time to time, I have to remind myself to get up and move around, go for a walk or--because I live in the godforsaken Northern winter wasteland--just stretch or dance or something. The motionless office will be the downfall of Western civilization. We'll all get really big heads and little scrawny bodies. Ew! I don't look forward to that future. And what's the point really? The Singularity is coming anyway, and we can never out evolve intelligent machines, so why not just keep our muscles and actually write about what it's like to BE HUMAN amid all this chaos?

What some of us have to go through to come up with a blog post!