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Constant stimuli, digital distractions - how can we stay focused these days? Does talent, training, or technology help? Neuroscientists and mental coaches sh…
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00:01 Being fully present when it matters… It’s time to race; there’s no more time for fun and games. Now is when it counts. This is the moment when the rest of the world fades into the background. Focus. Absolute concentration. So we can perform at our best. Our thoughts and energy are focused on a single task. I have to be fully focused at all times because I’m responsible for countless human lives. Some people are actually better at concentrating than others. But it’s not as if our ability to concentrate is defined at the age of 20 and then that’s it, there’s nothing you can do about it. No, of course not. Greater focus, more concentration – skills that are becoming increasingly important in an environment of constant stimuli. With the ultimate goal being to reach what’s called the flow state. If you can switch off your thinking and let go, you are in a stronger state of flow. And you can concentrate better. For me, in the flow state, things are just clear. I realize, OK, I’ve got this completely under control now. Can concentration be trained? What role do genes play? And: How do we achieve it – this flow state? Concentration is the ability to block out distractions so that you can focus on one thing. It’s actually the art of sorting through all the sensory stimuli that constantly bombard us and letting through only those that are really important at that moment. My name is Henning Beck. I am a neuroscientist 02:03 and I study how people think, learn, and understand. Concentration always comes from within. It starts with me being rested enough and having a plan, a goal to work toward. That means concentration is never pointless. What drives me in this sport is that I feel very free when I swim, that I can be completely myself, and of course the dream of winning. Of course, I want to hold Olympic gold in my hands someday, but I also just want to get the best out of myself and swim as fast as I can. My name is Angelina Köhler, I am 24 years old and I primarily work as a competitive athlete. My greatest sporting achievement was winning the world title in Doha in 2024 at the World Championships in the 100-meter butterfly and coming fourth at the Olympic Games in Paris. It was very hard for me when I touched the wall and saw that I was fourth. At that moment, my world fell apart. Before the Olympic Games, I set myself a goal and said, okay, I need something that will give me strength afterwards, something that will give me stability, something I can look forward to. And then I said to myself in advance, okay, I’ll book the trip I’ve always dreamed of and fly to French Polynesia, to Bora Bora, and see the island of my dreams. I think it’s important to take a longer break after a four-year cycle like that, to regenerate and then start the new Olympic cycle again, knowing that you have to really be disciplined for the next three and a half years. Now let’s take a slightly longer break. Take three deep breaths then breathe out consciously before you push 03:43 off, to begin anew, so to speak. Let’s go! Of course, longer breaks also have a negative effect on the body, and on your form. And that’s why first you rebuild, start with the basics, and get all areas up to speed. And that takes time. Glide slowly across the water. Breathe minimally so that you stay straight, but relax your shoulders and point your fingertips. Let’s do fifty times two with a 10-second break. Keep your shoulders completely relaxed. Lasse is my main trainer. He really supports me. He coaches me, gives me technical tips, watches how I swim underwater, and times me. Angie 47.07 The sequences we train are so precise and technically demanding that if you don’t concentrate, you can’t perform them properly and you’re not as fast. That means if you don’t concentrate properly, you lose. The body’s concentration headquarters is the brain. The prefrontal cortex lights up with activity. This is the part of the brain that is responsible for planning and self-control, among other things. It helps block out certain stimuli and focus our attention. This allows the neurons in all parts of the brain to communicate more intensely with each other, strengthening their connections and increasing information processing. It also releases dopamine, a vital neurotransmitter that promotes motivation and concentration. We shouldn’t imagine the brain as sitting down and then focusing on a task for several minutes, 20 minutes at a time. 05:39 Even now, as you listen to me at this moment, your brain is probing the environment for other things. Something even more interesting than what I’m saying might come along. In short, concentration can never be maintained over a longer period of time. It’s basically always just a short sprint. So the brain sprints for a few seconds or minutes until another distraction comes along, which you then have to actively suppress again. And this active suppression is what we call the ability to concentrate. Of course, that doesn’t mean that we can’t sit down for an hour or two and work on a project or a task. At peak traffic, the busiest phases of our shift, we deal with new aircraft every minute. An aircraft comes in, is cleared to land, leaves the runway, and the next one is already there and wants to land, so you’re really talking to at least one aircraft all the time. My name is Jan Peter Konopinski, I am 23 years old, and I am training to be an air traffic controller at Leipzig Halle Airport. During my shift, I primarily communicate with the pilots, giving them clearances and instructions on what to do. I coordinate with the controllers who monitor the airspace above us. I coordinate with the airport. And with a second radio system, I coordinate with the vehicles on the ground. I consider the profession of air traffic controller to be one of the most cognitively challenging jobs there is. It’s the Champions League of thinking, because it really pushes the brain to its limits. Oscar is my instructor. He sits next to me the whole time while I work. 07:47 He looks over my shoulder and helps me find the best solution for specific situations. Given the weather conditions, different approaches may be required on each runway. The learning curve is extremely steep at the beginning. He is bombarded with so much new information that he has a lot to process and learn. The difficult thing is actually in situations that may be quite simple and don’t require a lot of attention, to always remain alert. Some people say there is such a thing as an air traffic controller gene. This means that things like concentration, attention, and memory are innate and cannot be learned. I don’t know exactly how true that is. But I think you definitely need to already have some of these basic characteristics. Genes definitely play a role in cognitive abilities. Some people are actually better at concentrating than others. However, that doesn’t mean that environmental factors don’t play a role. You can have the best genes, but if you constantly allow yourself to be distracted, you won’t be able to concentrate for long periods of time. Conversely, if you are actually the type of person who is easily distracted, but make a conscious effort to work in a focused and concentrated manner, then you will be better able to do so in the long term. The biggest challenge for me is actually switching gears quickly. That means there can be phases when there is very little traffic, but within seconds that can change to really complex situations with a lot of parties involved, and then you have to go from this calm 09:38 and relaxed mode to being 100 percent alert in order to resolve the situation. This rapid change, revving up and slowing down, always means adapting your entire body at short notice to faster or slightly slower action. That alone requires enormous strength and enormous energy. I’m Thomas Baschab. I’m a mental coach. My clients include athletes from all kinds of sports. Routines always follow the same sequence, giving us security and peace of mind. And when we feel this peace of mind from the routine, it naturally increases our concentration. In the morning, I usually get up around 6 a. m., then I go to the kitchen, make myself a coffee and eat a breadroll. It’s always the same, really. It’s very, very important for me to have this routine. The routine gives me a lot of strength and stability, and I have a structured daily schedule. Routines allow us to conserve energy. Our brain needs less energy for things we do repeatedly out of habit, which happen almost automatically. When it switches to autopilot, the brain doesn’t have to make new decisions all the time. This gives it more capacity for something new. Now the hard work begins. The next competition is in six weeks, the German Team Championships in Essen, and I definitely need to be fit again by then. I want to show everyone what I can do. Ole is my best friend and training partner, and I have a lot of fun with him. He always brings out the best in me and motivates me, even 12:08 when I’m not feeling great. Angie is definitely a cheerful person, a ray of sunshine. She is very, very often in a very, very good mood, very, very cheerful, and many people enjoy being around her, but when she has her down phases, I would say she goes just as far in the other direction. I notice with Angie that when she loses focus or has lost focus, she gets into her head and can get overwhelmed relatively easily. Because in her mind she’s running ahead of her body. There are definitely days when I jump into the water and can’t do anything. My mind is somewhere else, not on the sport. And I can’t even manage to swim 100 meters. And then it just helps me to focus inward and return to my place of peace. I always think of aspen leaves, leaves blowing in the wind. In the summer, when you’re lying in a hammock, looking up at the trees, and the sun glitters through the trees or through those leaves. And that’s my absolute favorite place, and I always think about it, and it helps me a lot for 2 or 3 minutes, to go there and visualize it. And then I immediately become much more focused, much calmer, and can concentrate on the task at hand again. Visualization and working with metaphors, with mental imagery, is a common tool, even outside of competitive sports. It’s also used for people who are stressed or anxious. It’s a good method when we find ourselves in stressful situations. Monika Liesenfeld is my psychologist. We work in particular on sports psychology issues. Like how I deal with excitement, or how I deal with pressure. I met Angie when she was experiencing a lot of nervousness, excitement, and pressure before competitions. 14:15 Over time, things changed a bit. More personal issues came up. Then ADHD entered the picture, but she’s worked on herself a lot, and has a lot to show for it. Hello, Monika. Hello, Angelina. I’ll go right in. OK, I’ll be right there. ADHD plays a very, very big role in my everyday life; it’s something I have to deal with often. Through sports psychology, I’ve also learned to confront it better and to accept myself as I am. And yes, I’m very grateful to Monika for that. ADHD stands for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It is basically the inability to organize a vast amount of information and concentrate. In short, so many stimuli come in from the outside and the brain is not very good at prioritizing which things need to be filtered out. So you have to try to target your concentration using different mechanisms. I have a very specific routine before competitions where I get myself in the right frame of mind, so to speak. I usually listen to music before I start. I listen to a lot of Taylor Swift or Chappell Roan – who I’m really into at the moment. Music that pushes me and, most of all, music that I’m always listening to. Songs that I’ve heard a thousand times before. It just calms me down, grounds me, and I sing along… unfortunately for the other people who have to swim with me. But I don’t care at that moment because it’s about my race and my performance. 15:50 Shortly before the start, I go in and soak up the whole atmosphere to get used to the fact that it’s about to get loud, that I’m about to swim, and I keep telling myself, you can do this, you can do this, you can do this, you can do this. Structure, routines, and regularity help all people to better concentrate in those critical moments. I’m Dennis, I’m 21 years old and I come from Dortmund. I’m also known as Denninho, my gamertag. I was a big Ronaldinho fan back then, so that’s where I got my inspiration. The most difficult thing about FIFA is that if you want to be a top pro, you actually have to master all the basics first. It’s especially difficult because every little mistake, such as selecting the wrong player, can lead directly to a goal against you, or you just don’t score, and that can ultimately decide the game. For me, it was just a hobby at first, but then I realized I was a bit better than everyone around me, and at the age of 13 I joined an agency. At 15 or 16, I was with Hannover 96, and now I’ve been with Borussia Dortmund for five years. When I do something for a pretty long time with a very, very high level of concentration, it takes a lot out of me. And he’s not just an amateur who sits in front of the TV with his friends and plays a little. He’s a professional. The virtual Bundesliga was founded by the German football league. All Bundesliga teams participate in it. It’s a simulation of a professional soccer game. Back then it was known as FIFA and today as EA-FC. How do you always get it out of there? With the right stick and then triangle again. 17:44 Are you holding Triangle or what are you doing? Yes, but only after the ball is in the air. But that was different before the update, right? My coach is Alexander Steinmetz. He was also a professional e-footballer himself back then. And I think we make a good team. We’d better go over set pieces again. I’d say we should practice corner kicks both offensively and defensively. Okay, all right. So five corners each then? Yes exactly, alternating. Of course, we also have to train a lot. For me, that means several hours a day. A pro-level e-footballer has to master an incredible number of things. They have to stay calm, be particularly quick to react, and have analytical skills. They have to be able to put themselves in their opponent’s shoes. You have to be able to recall all the button combinations, which number in the hundreds, at the same time. Making decisions in a matter of milliseconds is probably unique to e-sports. And that also means that e-sports players in their mid-20s are already considered past their prime. Because the maximum processing speed of the brain is reached at around the age of 20, 23, 24 maybe. Then it starts to decline. That’s a good option, and then I have the ball against van Dijk. Van Dijk gets it, of course. I pressed circle, but I don’t have a chance anymore. The most important thing is that I don’t have to go head to head 19:19 with van Dijk anymore, but against the right back, who is a bit smaller. I always control a whole team, eleven players, though not all at the same time. I always select one, but then I use my controller to switch and select another one. Nice. For me personally, multitasking is one of the most important things in the game, like when you have to move the goalkeeper and defend at the same time. If, for example, he takes a shot at the far corner and you know it, then you have to pay attention to where your goalkeeper is standing, you try to steer him to the far corner, but at the same time you have to try to block the player, because you can’t guarantee that if you move the goalkeeper downwards, he’ll save it. We call it multitasking, but it’s actually the process of rapidly switching back and forth between tasks. But the brain isn’t designed to perform several complex tasks at once. During this switching back and forth, it loses information and has less capacity to process and store new things. This is known as the “switching cost,” or the cost of shifting attention. Multitasking can be thought of as trying to watch several TV shows at the same time. You just can’t. You have to switch back and forth between the shows. Then you notice two things. First, when you switch channels, the TV screen goes black for a moment. The same thing happens in the brain. So when you switch back and forth between tasks, you first have to reorient yourself. 20:56 You’re not immediately on the ball. And that would be the second effect. Once you’ve switched, you need a moment to figure out what’s going on. And that also happens when you jump to a new task. You look around, you get your bearings, and that’s exactly when people make more mistakes because they’re not focused. Breaks are extremely important for us. First, they occur more frequently than in other professions. And they are also longer. Simply because the stress during our working hours is extremely high. Even when there is little traffic, we have to stay focused all the time. Why do we need breaks? When you’re too stressed, there are all kinds of physical reactions. And the body is simply telling you to slow down, take it easy, don’t always go full throttle. Because if you’re always going full on, at some point your system will collapse. I don’t really do anything special during my break. But what I definitely don’t do is think about work. Instead, I just do something completely different. Whether that’s reading a book or working out. Football is generally very, very important to me. As a little boy of three or four, I started playing with my dad on the field. I play for VfL Hörde. We’re in Kreisliga A and are currently in second place in the men’s league. In e-sports, there is often a lot of mental and emotional stress, you are under a lot of pressure to perform, you always want to perform. For me, classic football on real grass tends to clear my head. Our brain needs a lot of energy. Although it only makes up about two percent of our body weight, it consumes almost 20 percent 22:57 of our total energy. And as soon as we exert ourselves mentally and concentrate, our energy consumption goes up, and the body releases the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol. Adrenaline makes us more alert and focused. Cortisol mobilizes the energy reserves in our body that we need at that moment. If mental exertion lasts too long, it can stress our bodies. That can show up in symptoms like muscle tension, headaches, or mental exhaustion. People who are under a lot of physical stress naturally need physical relaxation. They should lie down and do something that relaxes them. On the other hand, people who are under a lot of mental stress should relax mentally.. simply find peace and quiet during some downtime. When I have the afternoon off, I often like to dress up. I ditch the sportswear, and go into town. Shopping is a great way to unwind, just to switch off mentally. It takes me to a whole other level and distracts me a little from all the everyday stress or even swimming. I relax between training sessions. Mostly by creating a little routine for myself, relaxing, sleeping, reading a little. I also make sure that I don’t spend too much time on social media, because I notice that it makes me restless. In everyday life, digital devices are certainly the number one concentration killer. A major, perhaps the most important change in digital media was that you can scroll endlessly. This means that we now find ourselves in a world without an end. In the past, there was a book that I read, it had a last page, 24:58 and then it was finished. A movie has a final scene. So everything comes to an end at some point. Not anymore. Digital devices are designed to be endless. But if they are endless, people are never satisfied. My social media consumption habits could be better; let’s just say there’s room for improvement at the moment. I spend a lot of time on Instagram and TikTok. That’s why I try to set myself a time limit of one hour on Instagram and TikTok per day. People aren’t actually very good at concentrating, but they are particularly good at recognizing new stimuli and then deciding whether what’s happening around them might be potentially useful. People are naturally prone to distraction. Over time, it doesn’t appear that we have become worse at concentrating. But due to a flood of information in today’s media, we are consuming more and more content in shorter and shorter bursts. This makes it more difficult to concentrate on longer tasks. The ideal solution would be to strike a balance between shorter and longer periods of concentration. It is precisely this balance, focusing on something and yet still being able to use our environment to improve ourselves, that has advanced humanity. That’s why we come up with ideas, that’s why we marched out of our Stone Age caves. That’s why we explore new fields or the universe. Of course, the last few weeks have been challenging. I think it’s difficult for every athlete, especially 26:38 for me, to find new motivation after the Olympic Games, to say, okay, here we go again. And what do you say? Can you be faster? Yes? Ok. That’s the question. 44:42. We have relatively long training periods and then it comes down to only a few moments where we can make our mark, meaning that we have to perform in a minute, on a specific day, at a specific time, under high pressure. Sometimes there are 500 spectators, sometimes there are 20,000, and yet the athlete must be able to do their best. On your marks (whistle) At that moment, she doesn’t have much time to think about what could happen, how it could be, and so on, and what we generally refer to as flow, you can only achieve that when you’re not in an active state of mind. When I’m in the water, I feel like I’m free, almost as if I’m flying. Yes, it’s a very special feeling that’s hard to describe because it just happens and you’re living in the moment, but it also feels like it’s happening on its own. It’s as if the pieces of a puzzle that have always belonged together are coming together. I’m in the right place at the right time. Basically, everyone is capable of getting into a flow state when they experience what they can achieve when they do what they do best. And most people know this personally from their own experience. Moments in which you say, wow, I was super productive. It just happened by itself. And this state, where things happen 28:18 by themselves, is basically the essence of the best possible productive human work. I get into this kind of flow state especially when there’s a lot going on, that is, when I have to process a lot of traffic. Sometimes, after about half an hour, when the rush is over, I look at my watch and think, I don’t know, maybe 10 minutes have passed, but in fact much more time has passed than I might have thought. I’m in Lübeck today because I was invited to take part in a research project. It’s about the flow state, or state of highest concentration. It’s not part of my training as an air traffic controller, but I’m still interested to see how I’ll do in the test I’m about to take. Flow is a positive state of consciousness. When we are in flow, we are highly focused and completely immersed in an activity. An activity that challenges us in the best possible way. The demands are not too easy, not too difficult, but just right, and it feels rewarding. My name is Corinna Peifer and I am a professor of work and organizational psychology at the University of Lübeck. The problem with flow research is that flow is a subjective state, so you simply have to ask people whether they are in flow. We usually do that with questionnaires. But that also means that we can only ask people about it either immediately before, or after an activity, because if we do it during an activity, we pull people out of their flow. And that’s why I’m trying to find a way to measure flow with the help of physiological markers. Of course, I’m a little nervous, but nothing’s riding on this test for me. So I’m mainly just curious and excited, and I’m trying 30:21 to approach it as relaxed as possible. When a person enters the flow state, the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for self-awareness and conscious action, shuts down. We lose track of time and focus entirely on the here and now. Our brain waves also change. When we are awake, beta waves, which are associated with attention and alertness, normally dominate. In the flow state, however, they transition to alpha and theta waves, which occur during deep relaxation. These wave patterns promote a focused yet relaxed way of working that makes us receptive to new ideas and perspectives. What is really exciting about the flow experience is that the areas of the brain responsible for reward are not particularly active. This is surprising, because people find this state particularly productive and uplifting. But it is less a feeling of euphoria and more a feeling of freedom from fear. This is because, in the moments of flow, the areas responsible for fear are less active. In other words, it is a feeling of anxiety-free productivity in which you lose yourself a little in the moment. Done! Yeah! And how was it? It was good, it was fun. Yes, that’s great, that sounds like flow. Yes. So, was it Flow? I would say so, at least in the reading part. In the math part, I wouldn’t necessarily call it that. It was too… clumsy… but in the reading task, because it was a fairly simple 32:14 text that was easy to read, I was able to get into a flow. Interestingly, we see exactly the same thing in the algorithm. We see that the algorithm did not detect any flow in the math assignment. And in the reading task, flow was detected, but only from about the second third onwards. At the moment, this is all still basic research and is happening in the lab. The goal is to be able to determine whether people are in flow or not while they are working. And that also means that measures can then be taken to help people get into flow or stay in flow once they are there. There is certainly no formula for getting into flow. But a lot of it revolves around tension, the build up or release of tension. A lot of it is about the balance we feel in our minds, in our entire system, and which we also feel physically. But, mental training offers many, many opportunities to promote flow. And the more you practice it and the faster you get into it, the faster you can recall it at any time. I think that over the years I’ve gotten a little better at dealing with the pressure. But of course, there’s always room for improvement. And now I’m curious to see if a mental coach can help me with that. I would like to get you to a place where you no longer feel pressure to perform, where you can just play freely. Feeling pressure is bad because pressure is a negative feeling. Let me show you what I mean. Stand up for a moment. Hold your arm out, and when I say hold, I’ll push down and you hold it as best you can. 34:12 OK? Hold. Okay, arm is stable. Now just say the word: fear. Fear. Hold. Fear. See. The arm goes down. Now say another word: confidence. Confidence. Hold. Confidence. And your arm stays strong. That’s it, it only takes a second. Sit down again. What I wanted to show you with that is that your subconscious is your boss. It controls everything. What you’ve just seen is that every negative impulse simply shuts down your system. And you can counteract that by sending positive impulses into your system in order to exploit your talent to its full potential. Wow, cool. Thank you very much. You’re welcome. I think that will help me to avoid negative thoughts during the game, like “don’t mess up” or something like that, because it’s not good for my mind. Instead, I’ll keep pushing myself with “come on now” and “you can do it,” and that’s how I’ll do it from now on. There is one thing that always prevents flow very quickly. That is the unconditional desire to get into a flow state. You often hear that you just have to want it. So when someone in sports makes this statement, it indicates a high degree of, let’s say, incompetence, because not wanting it enough is bad. But wanting it too much is even worse. Because wanting it too much simply keeps the muscles too tense and as a result, you don’t perform the same. 35:46 For example, fine motor skills deteriorate, mobility deteriorates, speed deteriorates. I’ve got six weeks of training behind me. The atmosphere is incredible because it’s extremely loud, the mood is electric. I think it’s a challenge for Angie to compete in Essen, just because it’s her first competition since the Olympics. That means that even after her successes this season, everyone is naturally looking at the reigning world champion. That means something has changed. She’s no longer little Angie. So of course that comes with a certain amount of pressure. The concentration and the noise level will be very, very difficult for me because I’m very sensitive to noise. That triggers me in particular. That means staying focused until the end. That will be a huge challenge. ADHD certainly doesn’t make it any easier to concentrate, especially in such a super loud swimming pool. On the other hand, you can also see that she’s developed mechanisms to deal with this situation. Competitiveness at this level is extremely high, and we’re not talking about a 20 per cent increase in performance or improvement through mental training. We’re talking about 1 per cent or 2 per cent. But being just 1 per cent better than others makes you the winner. The offline game day is always something very special for us, of course, because all the clubs in our division come to us and we all play together on site. You can definitely tell that it’s much more tense than an online game day. 37:53 You have to remember that it’s a huge challenge because we always train in a quiet room, play the online game day in a quiet room, have no distractions, and then fans come and you just have to stay focused and not get distracted. Losing is never an option. We always try to win the game and give 100 percent. It’s not a physical dependency to need flow to feel good in life, it’s more like, a beautiful mental desire, that we naturally want, but it’s not something you can make happen. I won 2-1 and actually think I had it under control for the whole 90 minutes. After the game, you’re completely exhausted, you can’t even talk, you have to collect yourself for a moment and just calm down. Unfortunately, we didn’t win a medal this year, but I’m glad we managed to stay in the league, which means we’re still in the first Bundesliga. And Essen also gave me a bit of a boost, so I can say, okay, I can swim, I’m fast, I don’t need to worry that it will suddenly be gone or something, even though I took a pretty long break. I think the plan we’re manifesting for the next two or three years is to establish ourselves at the top and deliver in the main competitions. When you’re at the top, it makes it hard to maintain your performance and continue to develop, so that you can remain among the best. My biggest wish is, of course, to win a medal at the Olympic Games, which I unfortunately didn’t get in Paris. I still have a score to settle, so to speak. As few distractions as possible, not too much stimuli around us, and an environment in which we feel comfortable – these are important building blocks for better concentration so that we can achieve what we have set out to do. 40:56 I always try to develop myself personally, to keep getting better, to keep at it, especially for BVB. And qualifying for the World Cup would definitely be very, very cool. First of all, getting my license is at the top of my list, of course. In the future, I would like to become an instructor. That means, like Oskar, training future air traffic controllers. Some people can concentrate better than others. But: Through routine and more conscious action, we can all improve our concentration– and sometimes even get into a flow state. The key to this lies in balance: improving our ability to concentrate. But also allowing our thoughts to wander sometimes. Because both seem to be deeply human. There is probably no other living creature that can concentrate as well and for as long as humans. And what has made us so successful in evolution is precisely this ability to plan for the long term, to concentrate on it, and not to miss the moment when we need to let our minds wander. It is this balance between concentration and digression that leads us to come up with the best ideas.