What is Your Focus Zone?

by Dr. Lucy Jo Palladino

We’ve all been there – enjoying music, art, travel, conversation, a favorite project, sport, or book. You feel relaxed, alert, and fully engaged. Concentration comes easily and energy flows. You’re in your focus zone.

In today’s world, distraction and overload knocks you out of your zone. Constant work demands are over- or understimulating. It’s hard to find the range of just-right stimulation between boredom and feeling overwhelmed, where attention is at your command. But simple, powerful strategies can help you stay in your focus zone. High achievers like Olympics athletes use these methods, and you can too.

How Attention Works

Stimulation improves attention, but only up to a point. After that, more stimulation weakens attention. Your focus freezes – like deer-in-headlights -- or narrows so that you miss important cues.

Adrenaline Chemicals in Your Brain

Brain chemicals called neurotransmitters are responsible for attention. Neurotransmitters in the adrenaline family – dopamine and norepinephrine -- rev you up. You need some of these adrenaline-based brain chemicals to keep you alert. But too much adrenaline makes you hyper, causing you to burn out. To sustain focus, you need a balanced brain chemistry.

Attention Management in a 24/7 World

In today's fast-paced, high-tech, quick-click world, everyone is prone to attention swings. Always-on technology kicks you into a high-adrenaline state of over-stimulation. Then ordinary life feels boring by comparison, so you drop into a low-adrenaline state of under-stimulation. You skip right over the state of just-right stimulation: your focus zone.

Old ways of paying attention don't work any more. You need new psychological skills to stay in your focus zone.

Tips To Stay in Your Focus Zone

Keep track of your adrenaline level. Use a 1 to 10 scale or simply rate yourself: "too low," "too high," or "in the zone!" Check in with yourself throughout the day.
Make a list of ways to psych up. Play upbeat music, open a window, vary tasks.
Make a list of ways to calm down. Play relaxing music, breathe deeply, sip herbal tea.
Use self-talk to keep yourself on-track. "What do I need to do now?"... "Stay with it; stay with it; stay with it;"... "I've finished things that are harder than this."
When you're distracted, keep asking yourself what you’re not doing. You’re probably avoiding tasks that are too high-stim (evoke anxiety or fear) or too low-stim (boring) or both. Identify and face your task, one step at a time.

Dr. Lucy Jo Palladino is a clinical psychologist and attention expert with thirty years of experience. Get more tips and tools to improve your attention in her new book, Find Your Focus Zone: an Effective New Plan to Defeat Distraction and Overload, published by Free Press / Simon & Schuster, and at her website, www.yourfocuszone.com.