Concentration how long

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. How long is it possible to maintain concentration? Ask Question. Asked 9 years, 7 months ago. Active 9 months ago. Viewed 65k times. A google search quickly reveals the ubiquity of this claim, so I suspect it falls in the category of "common psychological wisdom": On Yahoo! Improve this question.

Dejan Govc Dejan Govc 1 1 gold badge 4 4 silver badges 13 13 bronze badges. Research on college students suggest that their concentration on a undifferentiated lecture begins to lag after roughly 15 minutes. Studies in Physics Education Research suggest that demos and clicker quizzes can re-set the clock, so the current fashion is for roughly ten minutes of lecture between activities. All of which suggest that "concentrate" may not be terribly well defined here.

The internet is bursting with advice on how to concentrate amid a sea of distractions. But many of them are either wildly unrealistic or leave you out of the office loop and distracted by thoughts of what you might be missing. Perhaps more importantly, however, many of these tips bear little relation to what psychologists are discovering about the way the human mind works.

Many of the things we think we should be doing to help us concentrate actually work against the way that our brain naturally operates. So what can we learn from the science of focus to get more done, and do any of common tips actually work?

It might seem counter-intuitive, but allowing your mind to wander may be one of the best approaches if you are struggling to focus. This has led some psychologists to suggest that mind wandering is not so much a glitch, but rather a key part of the system itself that can help our brains function. If you spend half your time daydreaming, it might be an idea to schedule in time for it Credit: Alamy.

Looking at the brain itself can help to reveal that our focus wanes for a good reason. Concentration requires a network of brain regions including the frontal cortex, which is responsible for resisting distractions and controlling our natural impulse to do something more fun.

Keeping this network functioning requires more energy than the group of brain regions that are active when we are thinking about nothing in particular. Paul Seli, a psychologist at Harvard University, has distinguished between deliberate and accidental mind wandering , and says that only the accidental kind is bad for getting stuff done. This suggests that deliberately letting your mind off the hook now and again might pay dividends.

By Clare Wilson. Surgeons have to concentrate for hours on end. Just how long can we push ourselves mentally before our brain needs a break? For people in jobs where concentration is critical, like truck drivers, power-plant operators or airline pilots, a hour shift is the limit for most. Label them "morning," "afternoon," and "evening. Keep a card for each day.

As your skills build, you'll see the number of tallies decrease. And that's exciting! Remember to take short breaks. Lectures are usually 50 minutes long, and that's about the length of time most people can direct their attention to one task. But, that's just an average. Your concentration time-span might be less minutes or longer perhaps 90 minutes. When you take a break, oxygenate get more oxygen to your brain! Get up and walk around the room for a couple of minutes.

When we sit for long periods, blood tends to pool in our lower body and legs because of gravity. Our calves serve as pumps for our blood when we walk, getting blood flowing more evenly throughout the body. As a result, more oxygen is carried to the brain and you are more alert. Change Topics. Many students aid their concentration by changing the subject they are studying every one to two hours. You pay more attention to something that's different. And you can give yourself that variety by changing the subject you study regularly.

Incentives and Rewards. Give yourself a reward when you've completed a task. The task might be small, such as stay with a difficult assignment until you've finished.

An appropriate reward might be a walk around the block, a glass of water, or reading the day's cartoon in the newspaper.. For those special projects such as term papers, design projects, or long book reviews, set up a special incentive.

Upon completion, plan to give yourself a special pizza, movie, or an evening of TV. Incentives and rewards can be overdone. Use them for the especially difficult assignment or longer projects. When you do use them, make the rewards something you ordinarily would not give yourself.

Increasing Your Activity Level. Your concentration wanders more easily if you just read an assignment straight through. Instead, take the heading for each section and turn it into a question. For this section, that would be, "How can I increase my activity level while studying?

Do this routinely. The questions give us a focus for each section and increase our involvement. Also, as you study an assignment, make a list of questions you can bring to class.

Listen to the lecture for answers to those questions. Shift position in your seat every so often. Don't sit there frozen in one position.

The move will help keep the blood circulating, sending more oxygen to your brain and helping you remain alert. Skydivers, rock climbers, tightrope walkers, and lion tamers don't have trouble concentrating! You probably haven't done any of those.

But, think back to some time in your life when you had that calm, total concentration. Close your eyes and recreate that time. Visualize it, if you can. Feel how you felt at that time. Now, when you begin studying tonight, recapture that focused attention and see how long you can hold it. Does it feel as if that might work? If so, begin all your study sessions with the feeling and see how long you can maintain it. With practice, your concentration will get better and better.

Chart your energy levels.