Curated by the Knowledge Team of ICS Career GPS
Education
3 surprising secrets to maintaining your focus
Excerpts from article by Anthony Bartlett, published in Evernote‘s blog on medium.com
You’re probably too busy to read this article. That’s exactly why you should read this article.
When life gets hectic and you feel overwhelmed, the temptation is to just try harder. Your inner voice scolds you: skip lunch, have another coffee, push through the exhaustion. We’d like to suggest another way: Stop. Breathe. Give your mind a chance to catch up to your body.
The price of burnout
The problem with working harder is that it simply doesn’t work. The human brain isn’t designed to operate at full power all day long. Rather than helping you get closer to your goals, trying to focus for extended periods of time can fry your mental circuits, making it impossible to think clearly. As a result, your decision-making and creativity suffer.
A 2011 study conducted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign agreed. Researchers confirmed that “The brain is built to detect and respond to change.” In other words, our brains literally stop responding to something that is constant and unchanging — like that report you’ve been staring at for the past two hours.
How can you avoid this productivity drain? Do something different, even if only for a moment. The study’s authors found that “even brief diversions from a task can dramatically improve one’s ability to focus.”
However, it’s vital that you take breaks in an intentional, effective way. For starters, how often should you take a break? For how long? And what kind of break works best?
- Pomodoro Technique — In this method, you work for 25 minutes without interruption, then take a five-minute break. Stretch your legs, grab a glass of water, go to the bathroom. When the timer goes off again, you’re back to it. The good news is that after your fourth period, you can take a longer break — 15 minutes or more.
- “52/17” — A more recent study conducted by time-management app, DeskTime, found that the most productive people work for 52 minutes, then take a 17-minute break. The secret to this method’s success is what they call the “100% dedication theory.” In other words, whatever you’re doing, give it your complete attention.
- Pulse and Pause — This method recommends alternating periods of focused work (“pulse”) and rest (“pause”). The difference is that, in this method, each work period is roughly 90 minutes long. Tony’s research shows that “humans naturally move from full focus and energy to physiological fatigue every 90 minutes”.
Take ‘good’ breaks
Taking regular breaks is essential for productivity, but that’s only part of the story. How you take those breaks is equally important. What does a good break look like?
1. Schedule it
The trouble with downtime is that if you don’t actively plan for it, it often doesn’t happen. You get caught up in what you’re doing, or let guilt creep in to whisper that you’re being lazy. In a study conducted by the retailer Staples, one in five workers and managers cited guilt as the reason they don’t step away from their workspaces.
If you use an alarm to wake you to go to work, why not set an alarm to tell you when to stop working as well? Best of all, having a timer tell you when to stop can actually give your conscience a pass. “I’m not being lazy,” you can tell yourself.
2. Avoid common break “traps”
During work periods, your attention should be solely on the task at hand. Conversely, rest periods should be exactly that. Not checking email or surfing the web. When that well-earned break comes around, step away from your laptop, leave your phone where it is, and try to think about anything other than work.
Believe it or not, even chatting with colleagues can be a trap if all you do is discuss what’s going on in the office. Instead, try to find areas of common interest that don’t revolve around work. It’s also important to manage your energy levels throughout the day by making sure that your body is properly fueled with smart food options!
3. Get moving
The easiest way to make sure you’re taking a ‘good’ break is to get active. Stand up and do some light stretching, or if it’s a nice day, go for a walk outside. Even making a trip to the bathroom, or to the kitchen for a glass of water, can be enough to get your blood moving and pump oxygen to your brain.
Getting back to nature is also a great way to improve your concentration and mood. And as anyone who has experienced the euphoria of completing a challenging workout knows, exercise is not only good for the body but can improve mental clarity and focus as well. Researchers have discovered that just 10 minutes of exercise is enough to boost memory and attention.
Career
Up the employability quotient
Excerpts from Ankit Shyamsukha‘s article published in The Hindu
Skill education or vocational training is typically the cornerstone of any economy. Ironically, although India is considered to be a melting pot of knowledge and skills, the vast majority of its educated youth lack ‘employability quotient’. Equally problematic has been the quality of India’s vocational education content and delivery systems. Now that the digital era is here to stay, here is how the skill education sector can leverage this new medium and prepare the country for a new-age economy:
1. High-quality content dissemination
Digitisation ensures a high degree of standardisation and benchmarking of instructions, knowledge and training material and its storage. The skill education sector can leverage this by preparing, curating and using this high-quality standardised material (such as video lectures) for dissemination, based on learners’ needs.
2. Better training facilities for support staff
Digitisation makes it easier for the governments and industry authorities to recognise and give accreditation and certification to training programmes and material. The skill-providing industry/institution must make all this accessible to its learning community. For instance, a start-up can use online instructions or training material from global leaders to train its staff.
3. Live interactions
With some traditional technology giants offering free-to-use video conferencing and group interaction apps for collaborative learning, live instructions from a single point of delivery can be delivered to any number of learners, irrespective of geographies and time zones.
4. Both online and classroom training
Some skill education providers offer both classroom and online training, so collaboration with ed-tech companies and applications that take into account the low Internet bandwidth and erratic connections can be explored.
5. Higher demand for certain sectors
Digitisation has led to new-age careers and professions spawned by new technologies. Thus, there has been a demand for professionals in Banking, Finance, AI, machine learning, data science and mobile development, among others. This deficit can be addressed through online courses and training.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)
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