Limitless,, Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

PRACTICING CONCENTRATION
“Concentration is at the crux of all human success and endeavor,” Hindu priest, entrepreneur, and former monk Dandapani told me during one of my podcasts. “If you can’t concentrate, you can’t manifest.”¹ What Dandapani is saying is that concentration is a critical component of anything you want to accomplish. But, like so many other things we’ve discussed already, we’ve never really been taught how to concentrate. Sure, our parents and our teachers might have implored us to concentrate harder, maybe even criticizing our lack of focus with a question such as, “Why can’t you just concentrate?” But the simple answer to that is that most of us never learned how.
Dandapani points out that concentration is like a muscle that gets stronger the more you exercise it. “Concentration is something you can learn and something you can practice to get better at,” he said.² However, what most of us practice instead is distraction. We allow our minds to jump from thought to thought, often using technology to help us practice
distraction until we’re experts at it—and we should be, because we often get a dozen or more hours of practice a day. Just imagine what it would be like if we practiced concentration for even a fraction of that time.
Dandapani has a remarkably clear way of looking at this. “I define concentration as my ability to keep my awareness on one thing for an extended period of time. Every time my concentration drifts, I use my will power to bring my awareness back.”³
Most of us think of lack of concentration as a function of our mind bouncing from place to place. Dandapani has a different—and more helpful
—metaphor. To him, it isn’t your mind that’s moving; it’s your awareness. He sees awareness as a glowing ball of light that moves to different parts of your mind. In order to excel at concentration, you need to make yourself keep that ball of light trained on one spot in your mind for an extended period. This won’t be easy at first, but a conscious effort to exercise your will power in this way is likely to lead to impressive results.
You can work on this during nearly any pursuit. If you’re having a conversation with someone, make a concerted effort to pay attention to nothing other than that conversation. If you notice your awareness drifting away from the conversation, refocus your glowing ball of light. If you’re reading a report for work, train your eyes on the words as though nothing else exists. Again, if you notice the light of your awareness beginning to shine on something else, bring that ball back to the report. If you make the commitment to practice concentration an hour or so a day, it will soon become second nature.
Whenever possible, try to do one thing at a time. We’ve talked a bit about multitasking already, but for now just remember that multitasking is a grossly inefficient way to get anything done. If at all feasible, allow yourself to do whatever you’re doing to the exclusion of everything else. If you’re on the phone, don’t scroll through social media at the same time. If you’re making breakfast, don’t also work on your to-do list for the day. By doing one thing at a time, your concentration “muscle” will become incredibly strong, and your focus will reach limitless levels.
Another key to boosting your concentration is de-cluttering your environment. A Princeton University study found that, “Multiple stimuli present in the visual field at the same time compete for neural representation by mutually suppressing their evoked activity throughout the visual cortex, providing a neural correlate for the limited processing
capacity of the visual system.”⁴ In layperson’s terms, what this means is that physical clutter in your surroundings competes for your attention, which results in decreased performance and increased anxiety and stress levels.
So, if you want to become a master at concentration, divest yourself of the potential for distraction whenever concentration is critical. If you’re working on your computer, shut down every application and every open tab other than the ones you absolutely need to perform the task at hand. Limit the number of items in your physical workspace as well. While I think many of us consider a desk piled with books, magazines, papers, pictures of our kids, and souvenirs from our vacations to be cozy or even the sign of an active mind, every single one of those items creates a pull away from your concentration. Family heirlooms are wonderful, and you already know how I feel about books. Just limit the number of these things that share residence with the place where you need to be most productive.