It may sound counterintuitive, but you use less rather than more of your brain when you are concentrating well. At least that's what a study of golfers, carried out by John Milton and colleagues at the University of Chicago in 2006, showed. The brain activity of expert golfers was compared with that of novices. As the expert golfers concentrated on their shot, one small area of brain activity showed up. With the novice golfer, activity in the brain showed up in numerous areas. It seems that the expert golfers' ability to filter out extraneous and distracting information gave them the edge when it came to concentrating. For the novice golfers, all sorts of other irrelevant thought processes were distracting them and reducing their focus, reducing their ability to concentrate on the shot.
Further reading on this at:
As US golf professional Tom Kite said, "You can always find a distraction if you're looking for one.".
It's not just golfers who benefit from being able to concentrate, we do too.
It makes sense. If you are trying to concentrate on something, and you are constantly allowing yourself to be distracted by your email alert, the phone, other people - either in person or via MSN, your brain is having to accommodate lots of other activity.
So if you want to concentrate better, cut out some of the distractions.
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