Maintaining focus - can this be taught?

Getting stuff done for me this week is about focusing on one thing at a time. For example, right now, having just got to work, my mind is whirring. I'm thinking about opening new tabs, checking messages, checking my student management system, marking (my next task, and the one which is making me feel like this current blog post is not a priority).

Why is it that we cannot settle on one thing, and just do one task? Well the answer will be somewhere in the literature of how we are becoming digital citizens, always being stimulated by many different sources, I am sure there is research out there somewhere. However, if I am distracted by the one task that I am on, I then get stimulated by a whole range of things that enable me to stay off task for longer. For example, as I was writing this blog post I decided that my radio was too distracting, so as I went to that tab to close it down, I skimmed past my emails on the way back to see if I had a reply from the last one I sent. Dare I say that if I had Facebook open I most likely would have gone past there aswell, and then who knows what would have happened. 

I am practicing being mindful at the moment. I am three weeks into a 4 week course and the basic premise, again without trying to paraphrase stacks of research, is training your mind to be aware and present. A key aspect of this mindfulness  is something called 'attentional stability' - there is lots written on this, feel free to peruse google yourself -  but basically it is focus. It is one's ability to focus on a task without being distracted, and then distracted again, and then taken to a recipe, and then back to the emails, buzzfeed, stuff, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. If any one is reading this, I encourage you to consider how easily you can be pulled away from the task at hand, and then stay away with other things. 

So of course I am starting to think about how I can use this new emotional awareness in my teaching. Awareness is the key word here, I think. If I was to go back to my last post, I do not think it is wise to take responsibility for trying to maintain my student's 'attentional stability' (or, any facet of their 'stability' to be fair!) - but, I can facilitate them to be aware of it. And so I begin my day being reflective of how I may be able to do that pedagogically.