Concentration

Quote from Baudot:

The real point is that with age comes a wisdom and insight that all the powers of concentration 20 years ago were unable to focus. You need a change and something to challenge you.
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Hopefully this is true (though not always).

What youth has is amazing energy, strength and powers of virtual regeneration.

What age has is amazing knowledge, wisdom, and the ability to focus your attention on what is important.

So use your time wisely, because time is flowing.
 
I had something similar happen and doing the following helped a lot:

1) Totally re-working my daily schedule to do the most difficult things when I know I am at my peak. This time for me is between about 6am-11am.

2) Napping in the afternoon for 15 minutes. This helps with my focus and concentration in the afternoon. If I dont do this I find I mess up detailed items in the afternoon.

3) Juggling the time I take between active work & active relaxation to find the right mix. For me its about 50 min work, 10 min relax.

I basically repeat this process every day and it works well.

My brother is a oil drilling engineer for one of the big oil companies & they actually had a training class on the body's circadian rhythm idea as they had a statistically significantly high number of accidents between 2-3pm. Accordingly, they change up the work day to try and accommodate this.


Eric
 
That looks like dead-bang proof that meditation enhances a person's underlying ability to concentrate. Of course it's also true that meditation classically aims to detach meditators from the world and get them concentrating essentially on nothing. I, personally, would rather concentrate on something. I don't want to detach from the world, I want to stay in it and get something done. I don't know of any definitive proof that the power of concentration developed by meditation can be applied, for example, to flying a plane through a thunderstorm.

Author doesn't understand that the practice of concentrating on something is exactly the same as concentrating on nothing. It has the same effect. Note about detachment proves he doesn't understand the idea of detachment in Buddhism. It doesn't mean withdrawal from the world, it means you are not affected by whatever happens to you or around you.
Yoga talks about developing one-pointed mind. Mind which is capable of perfect 100% concentration. One result is complete continuous self-awareness. When you get to that point emotions are gone (monkey mind is gone).
You want to develop concentration abilities? Sit down for 15-20 minutes every day and focus on anything (it doesn't matter what it is) with exclusion of anything else. It will take you just a few seconds to realize how impotent you are in controlling your mind.
Nitro start doing it everyday and let me know how many days it took you to quit. I've been going at it for 13 years. .

It's really simple. And besides fuck the pills it won't do you any good.
 
Quote from nitro:

I appreciate the response, but I am either being unclear, or you are misunderstanding what I am saying.

What I am saying is that I am noticing distinct degradation in my capacity to concentrate for extended periods of time. I doubt it is anything I can cure with mental gymnastics. My daily regimen already includes a tremendous amount of that, as I am an avid reader, I program, am a chess player and bridge player, etc. But in all these areas, I see degradation in level of performance.

What I am saying is akin to saying that I have an engine and it has 120,000 miles on it, and I expect it to behave as if it had 5000 miles on it. In mathematics and in chess, it is "well known" that you are done with your best work by the age of forty, and it is a fast path downhill from there. I could never understand how that was true. Why should it be? Nah, it won't be true for me. Guess what, the experience is starring me right in the face, and as far as I know, there is nothing i can do about it.

The only thing I can think of is to exercise more vigorously, and to change my diet, but even that will probably only bring incremental benefits, and almost certainly only slow down the process. Worth a try though.

It is really annoying. The worst by far is, music doesn't sound as rich as it used to. That is not due only to hearing worsening, I am convinced that cognitively I am also not experiencing the same thing I used to.
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when you go limp then it's time to worry...
 
Quote from ElCubano:

when you go limp then it's time to worry...
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I am pretty sure I will never have that problem [running off to find a really big piece of wood to knock on]
 
I have the greatest respect for these people. But even though I linked to that article, I realize that I may have misled some of you, or perhaps not.

What I am trying to say is not that I want some solution around being able to concentrate better, I am talking about qualia of my own experience

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

My point is not that I am somehow dysfunctional in the world. It is that my own subjective experience has decreased. it is blurred, slurred, slowed, I can go on with metaphors. I am less alive as a human being. The only thing that I noticed brings back the intensity of my youth is drugs. Oh ok, coffee.

If it is possible to achieve the same thing with Yoga/meditation? I honestly don't know. If the act of meditating would allow me to experience the world in the same "color" that I used to, I should start doing it.
Quote from Cesko:

That looks like dead-bang proof that meditation enhances a person's underlying ability to concentrate. Of course it's also true that meditation classically aims to detach meditators from the world and get them concentrating essentially on nothing. I, personally, would rather concentrate on something. I don't want to detach from the world, I want to stay in it and get something done. I don't know of any definitive proof that the power of concentration developed by meditation can be applied, for example, to flying a plane through a thunderstorm.

Author doesn't understand that the practice of concentrating on something is exactly the same as concentrating on nothing. It has the same effect. Note about detachment proves he doesn't understand the idea of detachment in Buddhism. It doesn't mean withdrawal from the world, it means you are not affected by whatever happens to you or around you.
Yoga talks about developing one-pointed mind. Mind which is capable of perfect 100% concentration. One result is complete continuous self-awareness. When you get to that point emotions are gone (monkey mind is gone).
You want to develop concentration abilities? Sit down for 15-20 minutes every day and focus on anything (it doesn't matter what it is) with exclusion of anything else. It will take you just a few seconds to realize how impotent you are in controlling your mind.
Nitro start doing it everyday and let me know how many days it took you to quit. I've been going at it for 13 years. .

It's really simple. And besides fuck the pills it won't do you any good.
More...
 
Quote from nitro:

My point is not that I am somehow dysfunctional in the world. It is that my own subjective experience has decreased. it is blurred, slurred, slowed, I can go on with metaphors. I am less alive as a human being. The only thing that I noticed brings back the intensity of my youth is drugs. Oh ok, coffee.

If it is possible to achieve the same thing with Yoga/meditation? I honestly don't know. If the act of meditating would allow me to experience the world in the same "color" that I used to, I should start doing it.
More...

how old are you?? I find running to enhance my concentration and my energy 10 fold. I notice it during the days I don't run or excersize. I guess the zest for life decreases exponentially as one gets older.
 
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