Caught in a trance? Your productivity doesn’t stand a chance: Daydreamers are more likely to get tripped up by other distractions, finds new British research.
In the study, people completed a task that measured attention span. The more a person identified himself as a “mind wanderer,” the more his focus was scrambled by irrelevant external distractions. Basically, your tendency to space out also makes you more susceptible to outside interference, the study shows.
For years, researchers believed people who tend to zone out were also difficult to distract, due to their ability to become lost in thought. But this new research indicates your brain’s ability to ignore useless info doesn’t vary—regardless of whether the distraction comes from inside your own head or elsewhere, explains study coauthor Sophie Forster, Ph.D., of the University of Sussex.
If you’ve got a short attention span, you need to get rid of anything that could disrupt your workflow, Forster says. Start with your phone and email inbox, both of which top the list of common interrupters. Close out, mute, or turn off both while you’re working—you can revisit them during downtime—and you’ll eliminate a lot of potential concentration contaminators.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to block out the distractions that originate in your head, Forster adds. But music may help with that. Spending a few minutes a day listening to complex classical tunes from composers like Bach and Handel sharpens the regions of your brain responsible for focus and attention, research shows.
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