Focus and attention are two essential classroom and life skills that allow people to stay engaged on a task, resist distractions, and work efficiently. These two skills allow you to direct effort into completing a task even though there’s a lot happening.
Imagine yourself in a classroom and you are working on an important project that you can’t to elsewhere. Tommy starts drumming on his desk, Susan is talking to Anton about Bridgerton (you just finished season 2), Will is practicing how to throw paper planes, and you’re also hearing French from somewhere.
In a typical classroom of 20+ students, there are a lot more distractions than these. What sets you apart from those who are not working on their project is your ability to filter out anything that doesn’t help you achieve your goal.
What Bad Focus and Attention Skills Look Like
In the hypothetical classroom from before, weak attention and focus skills mean that Tommy’s drumming would have prevented you from reading the project outline, you would have joined in on Bridgerton theories with Susan, and Will’s paper planes would have made you dizzy. Switching between tasks repeatedly or not working on one thing for a sustained duration are other examples.
You may also find yourself loosing where you left off on a task, needing to start over, or reading the same sentence repeatedly.
Focus
Most people are actually very easily distracted. Noises, scents, clutter, or even temperature make it hard to get things started or going. The common solution is to remove the barriers. When this is not possible, like telling your classmates what to do, the next ideal solution is to go somewhere else.
Being able to understand and do this (regulate your attention) means that your other cognitive abilities, like planning, task initiation, and organization, can do what you need to do to achieve your goals.
The general principle is about managing your environment, tasks, and awareness so you can be in control.
Partner With Us
Circle To Sphere educators know that it takes good focus and attention to stay ahead of school work and learning. You will learn how to assign importance, gain good habits, and set impactful goals. But it doesn’t just take focus and attention to come out on top. Check back into the skills library to learn more.
You must be logged in to post a comment.