Humans are not born with a ‘user’s manual’, so no wonder most of us don’t know how to use our body. In the coming series of blog posts, I will share with you the ‘secret manual’ of using your brain to boost your performance.
Life is fair and every one of us has the same 24 hours a day. After sleeping (on average) for 7 hours, other time necessary for life (such as commuting, eating, resting, watching TV, on Facebook/Twitter … etc) for 6 hours, then we only have 11 hours left. Assuming that you work on average for 8 hours per day, then you have 3 hours to spare.
Jelly fish are beautiful but they don’t have brains…
Scientific studies show that our brain only has limited ‘capacity’ for attention. For an adult, we can focus (I mean ‘truly focus’) on one thing for 20 minutes. Then, most people start losing attention because your brain sends a signal (and you are not aware of this!) to “suggest” you to look for something different; something more ‘interesting’. Humans, like most animals are not naturally ‘designed’ to sit in an office, so our brain naturally looks for ‘new things’ to stimulate itself. This is why we lose attention and drift away. It’s not your fault, really, so don’t blame yourself!
Focus can boost your performance, but you need to know how to focus. (Photo credit: The Shore School, Sydney)
Training can extend your attention, but not long. So, the best way to boost your work performance is to learn how to effectively use this short attention period and make the best use of it! By the way, the attention capacity for a children (say 7-12 yrs old) is about 5 mins and for teenagers, it’s about 10-12 mins only. So, if your kid loses attention while doing his homework, don’t be angry at them. This is how nature works!
Now that we know the basics of how our brains work, I will show you how to boost your work performance in Part II of this blog. See you next time. ^_<
Dr. C. Richard Wu @ REEAConsulting.com
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