How to turn off the juke box in my head and learn to focus better?

I have this problem. Something with intense focus snaps me out of it. Eating or taking a shower helps.

I’m trying meditation to help still my mind. I like it. At the moment the guided meditation I’m doing is about using visualisation to help you focus. I don’t get to do it every day, but I do it quite often and I think it’s helping.

@Earthbound_Misfit Would you tell me more about that? How does that work?

I tried meditating some time ago, but then I dropped the practice and I can’t get on track anymore…

Mine isn’t as severe, but I do find that often if I can play some music, that it lets me focus seemingly because that part of the brain sits back and is satisfied. However I have known several people (musicians, composers) who get distracted by external music. Some such people find peace when some spoken media is on, such as radio or TV, but spoken media or tends to jam my ability to concentrate. So, apparently it depends. Music doesn’t always work for me, too, and it depends on the music. I suggest experimenting with different things to find what might work for you.

I’m not an expert so I use one of those apps. I’ve used both Calm and now Headspace. Headspace is more instructional, so I feel I’m learning more as I go. You can do a 10-day trial for free with either of them. I think the key is to keep the practice in mind as you go through your day. Calm has more sessions you can just do when you need, while Headspace is more regimented. Give it a go and see if it works.

There are people here with a million times more experience with meditation than me. I just figure it really can’t hurt to quiet my mind and to learn how to be able to do that when I need to.

We live in such a busy world and the online environment and technology mean we’re always on. Another thing you could do is just to switch everything off and spend a few minutes every day doing nothing. Just sitting in your garden (on your verandah, or in the park) and listen to the birds and the like. If you can learn to quiet your mind and extend the time you do this for, I think your focus will improve (I hope so anyway because I need to do the same!).

Also, stop multitasking. Just read your book. Or watch a film. Or talk to your friend. Leave the phone in your jacket. Don’t do three things at once. I think this will help us both to extend our ability to focus.

It may not be the advice you want, but I find learning to multitask helps me combat with being distracted. Like you, my mind wander around a lot. I have soundtrack in my head all the time. I often fails to listen due to my daydreaming too. Multitasking is just a way to teach my brain to focus on several things at once without investing too much energy on one thing. You are probably like me, with brain power too strong to settle down. Learning the skill also does me wonder: I can complete several tasks at once while still have fun. Just yesterday I did my research paper while answering several friends on Facebook, and I still had my part done. Now I’m worried that people didn’t know about the research paper and thought that I had too much time in my hand ~

But the secret to effective multitask is learning to set priority. I choose what to do and I don’t choose what I know will take too much energy to multitask. If you ask me to write my paper while going to the chatroom, then I will have to turn down. Set a small schedule of what you need to do in a short time and stick to it. I’m used to setting priority so I can draw it in my head, but you should at least write down. It takes practice, but it will work eventually.

@Mimishu1995 Oh, I’ve tried making schedules and stuff. It never works, or works only for a short time. Then I get distracted and forget about the schedule and do something else.
Multitasking is also out of question. When I try doing several things at once, I end up doing neither of them.

@Sneki95 Then maybe you need to consider @Earthbound_Misfit‘s advice, or you may need to find help. I suspect that there is a deeper issue behind your dreamy mind…

I really don’t think multitasking is good if you are trying to improve your focus. Something else I do is to set myself three or four essential tasks for the day rather than making a big list and schedule. Just three things you want to achieve. See if that helps.

@Earthbound_Misfit I’ll try that and see what happens.

@Mimishu1995 Possible.

(sigh) somebody always has to point out the obvious… ~

Buy some doorknobs and put them in a bag.

The music in my head never stops either. It’s constant. Continuous. What I do when something is running on repeat and driving me nuts is this: I pick the music I’d rather hear on the jukebox in my head and crank the volume until it drowns out the annoying soundtrack. This usually works. I can change a stupid song or ditty to, say, a nice operatic chorus or an instrumental piece and keep it up as long as I actually know the piece.

Concentrating, though: I can do that. So, sorry, I don’t have a tip for you there. I get absorbed in things and everything else goes away. Except the soundtrack.

However, I have an idea that someone who’s capable of transcribing and translating 17th-century Slaveno-Serbian underestimates his or her own powers of concentration.

@Jeruba “I pick the music I’d rather hear on the jukebox in my head and crank the volume until it drowns out the annoying soundtrack.” But then the new music becomes the earworm. The juke box simply changes the record! But you mentioned instrumental music, so it may be different….
Sometimes I listen to classical music when I work and it usually works. Until I lose the focus.

Oh, and that text was fairly easy. I didn’t need to translate anything, and it was around fifteen pages. It still took the whole day.

and I meant “movie soundtrack”, not “move spundtrack”

I would just say, I totally relate. In my contry, they call it ADHD, or some variation… I’ve been diagnosed since I was like 7. Treated medically, a few times. I took ridalin for a short time, before I just started acting like I took it. I usually threw it in the trash. I didn’t like the way it made me feel…

I think we just weren’t meant to be sitting, sedentary, or too inactive. Doesn’t make you have to have a disorder, just because you don’t like sitting in a seat for hours…

But yes. I am heavily distracted by “music in my head,” or most accurately, inability to shut down mentally… for lack of a better way to say it…

@Sneki95, how long are you trying to focus for? You know most of us can only really focus for 10, 15 minutes and then our brains say ‘enough!’ So if you’re working on something, give yourself some short breaks too.

Other things I do (because this is really something I fight with) is use one of those pomodoro timers. I find actually getting started is the hardest thing, but that once I do, I’m fine to keep going. So perhaps try using one of them to get you going.

Since the tribute to Chuck Berry on PBS about a week ago I have had My Ding-A-Ling playing in my head. The beat even coincides with my walking so it pops up when I should forget about it.
I can still work though. The fear of missing a critical deadline keeps me on track.

….mustn’t play with my ding-a-ling….

@Earthbound_Misfit I had not heard of the Pomodoro method until you just mentioned it.
I like the idea. And I like the idea of using low tech tools: pencil, paper, and mechanical timer.

@Earthbound_Misfit I tried focusing on the units of work. For example, I’ll try focusing until I learn one lesson, or I’ll try focusing until I finish one unit of my work. I tried to cut the work in smaller parts and practice the focus like that. Like written above, I tried counting to 100 to concentrate.

It usually doesn’t work.

@Sneki95 Let me start out by saying you don’t have to answer this question.

Have you been treated or diagnosed for any kind of “attention disorder” ?
If so maybe you should revisit the Doctor. It sounds like it is really bothering you.

I agree with @Tropical_Willie. It sounds more and more like you don’t have any control on what to focus on. None of the advice so far seems to work for you. Your problem sounds like something beyond just a dreamy mind. You need to seek help.

Not everyone who hears music has ADHD.

No I agree @Jeruba I only asked if they had visited with professional help.
IF it is impacting their day to day life they should seek help professionally not the inter-web.

I would be slower to seek a clinical diagnosis, especially ADHD… it’s not that some people don’t genuinely have ADHD, it’s that it tends to get over-diagnosed. Having a hard time focusing on some things, or having a hard time focusing some times, isn’t the same as having an inability to focus on anything at all for any meaningful amount of time.

Sneki, what kinds of things are you finding it hard to concentrate on? That 15-page reading, was it something you were assigned to read or supposed to read rather than choosing on your own? Was the topic interesting? Was the writing engaging? (I know you said it was simple reading, but something might be simple and yet painfully dry.)

What kinds of things do you find yourself focusing on the way you want to?—Once you’ve got that, start looking at the variables. What about these things, or about the environments surrounding these things, draws your attention? Is there any way you can take some of those qualities and brings them into the stuff that is harder to find engaging?

What kind of environment are you trying to focus in? Is it always in the same place?—I’ve found that I get restless when I try to go through the same routine every day, but since I still have a lot of reading to get through, I change up my environment—different positions, different rooms, different places—finding little cafes in the area with comfortable places to do work… Perhaps finding a place with natural background noise will help you focus, especially if your internal music-track is distracting you… I would start experimenting. And, depending on what you are doing, you might find different environments help you focus. If I’m reading or writing, I like background noise or silence, but I can’t do music or talk radio (like someone mentioned above) because both are too crisp (specific rhythms, specific words) and pull me away from the content at hand. But for other tasks, I find music or radio quite enjoyable, I guess because the task I’m doing doesn’t need the part(s) of my brain that tracks melodies or narratives.

And then the content itself… if it’s something that’s boring, try to find ways to push through that you find motivating. Does promising yourself a reward at the end help? (It doesn’t usually help me, but I know many people who love this strategy.) Or reminding yourself why it’s important to do?

Specifically with reading… especially material I’m not interested in: I’ll try reading the text aloud like I would to an audience, with intonation designed to dramatize, and I can bring some emotional interest into whatever subject. Or sometimes, depending on the topic, I’ll remind myself what aspects of that topic I find interesting, and I’ll look for things that connect back to those aspects as I read—setting a sort of intention to the reading, so my mind is more actively engaged in parsing the information. Or I’ll try to pick apart the structure as I read “why are they saying this here?” and “wouldn’t x have been better to say?” or whatever, and become as much of a critic as a consumer of the text. Etc. Various methods or games of sort that I use to try and become more invested in the content, that I use to try and give my mind something more to do than just passively accepting. Maybe you can find similar strategies?

@LuckyGuy I am horrified to learn that is a Chuck Berry song! I honestly thought it was something The Simpsons had made up for Ralph Wiggum!

@ThePigman Any American over 50 knows and remembers singing that song. And we all smiled when we saw Ralphie try to sing it on the Simpsons.

…And every time that bell would ring, catch me playin’ with my…...

@Soubresaut
“What kinds of things are you finding it hard to concentrate on?”
Well, usually work and studying. When I study, it’s a nightmare.I can’t get focused at all, or get focused only for some smaller amount of time. The worst part is, I need my computer to work and study, and it often shifts my attention to everything else except studying.
That text I was working on was a school project. I assigned to do it myself, it wasn’t really obligatory.

“What kinds of things do you find yourself focusing on the way you want to?”
I’m not sure I understand this. Are you asking me what things do I manage to focus on better?

“What kind of environment are you trying to focus in?”
My room/house. To answer the next question, yes, it’s always the same place. I live at home, where I study too. I can’t travel to the library in the city everyday, because I live in another place.
I tried changing the environment and study in the yard, but I still got distracted with the noise and the wind and my sister, but that’s another matter In my room, anything can distract me, from the comp to the noise outside to the chatter in the other room, to all the other thing I have to do around the house.
I tried finding an apartment in the city, but it turned out way harder than I expected it would be.

As for the content, it’s not really that boring. Once I get into it, it’s quite interesting. But then I get distracted easily.

I’ll try that pomodoro technique today, hopefully I’ll manage to endure at least an hour.

Simply stopping the jukebox is hard, there is that silence and the jukebox sneaks up and fills it again.
You need to replace it with something that accommodates your concentration.
A lot of people like using a mantra or affirmation to push the jukebox out.
Once you have mastered that, the next stop is silence and calm.

Best of luck with the pomodoro technique!

… With the one question, yeah I didn’t word it great. What I was trying to get at… I’m guessing there are some activities/tasks that you can focus on well, where you don’t find yourself so distractible. I guess I was wondering what those activities might be, and if you could figure out reasons why you find it easier to focus on them… if you can figure that out, maybe you can figure out ways to set up the things on which you find it hard to focus so that they are more like the activities on which you focus well? It would take a lot of reflection and trial-and-error, but maybe it’s something to try?

Of course, the other jellies’ suggestions like meditation and trying to minimize certain make distractions and the pomodoro technique make a lot of sense to me… so I’m probably trying to complicate things more than they need to be!

@Sneki95 Try this one. It’s guaranteed to wipe any other earworm from your mind!