Tag Archive - Retraining our brain

How Writers Can Retrain Their Brain to Tune Out Distractions

Last week we started talking about distractions and how this era we live in has corrupted us. We are so easily distracted by tech, so it’s no wonder it’s so hard to get a good chunk of writing done. Not only is our time impacted by the countless distractions; the quality of our writing suffers.

I mentioned that Larry Rosen, PhD, a research psychologist and author of Disorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us says we rarely focus on and attend to any task for more than three to five minutes without getting distracted.

His advice? We have to retrain our brain to respond based on a set schedule rather than spontaneous cues (such as beeps and bells and pop-ups telling us someone or some app is sending us a message).

Easiest way to do this is to turn everything off. Continue Reading…

How We’ve Ruined Our Brains in This Modern Era

Ah, distraction. The bane of our modern existence. Face it—we are going to be deluged with distractions every waking moment of the day. Unless you’ve found a way to live in a bubble or at the top of a mountain, deep in a cave, you probably are going to have some distractions. Even then, that water dripping from the ceiling in a steady rhythm is going to start distracting us.

I think the problem is worse than we know. Because decades ago, we just didn’t have the kinds of distractions we have now. And because we are so used to being connected online to everyone else in the world (or so it seems) around the clock, it’s more a problem of our habits than anything else.

So now we’re going to go deep into the “C” of our Productivity ABCs: our choices, which impact our behavior. And retraining our brain is a choice writers need to make if they’re to be super productive. Continue Reading…