How to control your emotions to concentrate much better

A leader’s most precious resource is not time, but concentration. Time flows equally for everyone and only concentration helps us to do something.

When we focus our attention on a specific conversation or some task, with a minimum expenditure of time, we achieve a maximum effect.

But if we do not feel like concentrating on work, even a whole day will not be enough for us to do the same. What conclusions can each of us draw from this?

We need to realize how important it is to improve our ability to concentrate and direct our attention, minimizing our distractions.

One of the most important steps to achieving this goal is controlling your emotions. Psychologist Victor Johnston calls emotions “hedonic selective amplifiers” – they increase the volume of certain signals in the noise around us, drawing our attention to certain events and distracting it from others. In other words, emotions are the magnets of attention.

Accordingly, the recognition of emotions and their regulation is necessary for the productive direction of your attention. Here are some practical guidelines:

• Strengthen your ability to focus – can be developed with the help of various practices – meditation, journaling, rest in nature, regular sports and quality sleep.

All of the above strengthens attention, helps you get rid of distractions and manage your emotions effectively. Even the small expenditure of time for meditation, relaxation in nature and sports will bring obvious fruits.

Recent research has shown that a few minutes of meditation a day, an hour a week in nature, short notes in a journal in the evening noticeably increase a person’s self-esteem.

Even some psychologists point out that as a result of these practices, personal effectiveness also increases. Regular performance of these daily and weekly exercises is important.

While these pursuits are enjoyable in themselves, they don’t need to be considered luxuries—it’s an investment in your own peak performance.

Some professionals at the beginning of their career often become successful because they managed to give up these “vices” – they sleep little, do not do sports, work all day.

After a while, thanks to these sacrifices, such people can achieve more, but as a result, their ability to concentrate weakens significantly.

And although top-level executives continue to work with all their might, in the new stage they create something valuable not because of extra hours of work, but of higher quality, because of their better ability to concentrate .

• Stop the leaks – attention is fleeting, our ability to focus is too limited. Distractions can undermine even the most effective leadership, which is why we need to avoid any “drain of attention”.

A few weeks ago, psychologist Victor Johnston pointed out: “All these functions of our phones and other mobile devices – ringing, blinking, flashing red numbers – are designed to attract our attention, creating a sense of urgency in us.

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But how urgent are these messages and calls really? They’re not urgent at all – so turn off your phone and everything else.”
Destroys concentration and “multitasking”.

Several activities that do not require concentration can be performed simultaneously, but it takes a lot of energy to focus on complex tasks.