Do you ever have a problem zooming in on a specific thought? Have you ever watched your child lose concentration during homework? This is called focus.

Then, what is focus?

Why is it so important in everyone’s life?

Synonym for focus is concentration or attention. Why are there so many people suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder(ADD) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder(ADHD.) What is the solution for this problem and how to capture the student’s attention? Since my profession is teaching, it is practical issues for every day. I must understand clearly and have to have practical methods to be helping all my students.

In this page, my intention is making a foundation page to discuss all aspects of the concept of focus(or concentration, attention.)

The starting point is following questions:

What is focus?

Why do we need this faculty? – What is the purpose of it?

How to gain focus?

How to measure it? – Without knowing how to measure it, we can’t control it.

Definition:

What is focus?:

Dictionary.com will answer as “a central point, as of attraction, attention, or activity”

What about concentrate?

“to bring or draw to a common center or point of union; converge; direct toward one point; focus”

The word concentrate comprised of 3 parts; con => means together + center => means middle of activity or interest + -ate => it is suffix that means causing.

What about attention?

“the act of faculty of attention, especially by direction the mind to an object.”

Another word of “attend” is being present or participate. What is opposite word of “attend”? It is absent, which means none exist. One can physically be present but mentally gone into a daydream.

Okay, what it means altogether?

In summary, bring all elements in the middle to connecting together to form an understanding or assign the meaning. With this faculty, we can think, learn, get understanding, to perform, and gain knowledge covering every part of human life. Therefore it is the most important life skill that everyone must master it, without it, no one can able to become a mature human being.

How to: 1 – Physical strength

A score ago, I looked up in the American Heritage Dictionary for concentrate, at the time it says “ability to focus one’s mind”. Soon enough, I realize that definition is only a half-truth. Because concentration consumes a lot of our mental and physical energy. We all know how tiring it is after a full day loaded with work.

It requires muscle strength, acquired skills, and willpower. Therefore it has to be defined as “ability to focus one’s mind and body together(whole being)”.

If any child is suffering from ADD/ADHD, they must develop physical strength first to gain focus, because without appropriate muscle strength it is not possible to focus, nor able to perform any task. Again, this means a child didn’t have enough time to develop their body. Growing up is the process of gaining physical and mental strength. Most simple sign of ADD/ADHD is they can’t stand or sit still which backed up by muscle strength and will. That is why in Orient, meditation is most effective way to gain an ability to focus.

How to: 2 – Increase Will power

This is perhaps most important item of “How to improve ability to focus, concentration, and attention. Reason is, it is the ultimate foundation of an individual. After writing it down as I described, it is so obvious point to anyone. However it is totally missing points in whole world, education industry, working-corporate industry, well as parenting society. Reason is completing a task is much more important than the dignity of an individual. Do we live life just to complete a daily task for financial gain, or live like a true individual? Base on answer to question, I will treat others as an object, or an individual as I. I hope this point is eye opening for you. Question is how to increase human will power? It is loaded question, I will cover it later post.

Looking forward to bring you another post