Mindfulness: how to focus

Enrique Escauriaza, coach and expert in leadership, explained to the students of Master of Science in International Business (MScIB) that follow International Human Resources Management course the power of mindfulness and the benefits of focusing on the present instead of multitasking.

In the beginning, Escauriaza said that “we are used to work with many interruptions that distract us”: we receive dozens of emails, we check the smartphone hundreds of times daily… And we do the same in our common life: most of the people admit that while they are watching TV they are browsing on the Internet too.

However, many studies prove that multitasking is worse than doing the same activities one after the other: we spend 50% more time, we make 50% more errors and we have 50% less memory retention. It is a fact that multitasking is not efficient and reduce our capacity to concentrate.

Moreover, we not only have external impacts that distract us from our tasks but internal distractions that reduce our attention. It is said that we have 80.000 thoughts per day, but we spend 46,9% of the time not focused on the present.

After that, Escauriaza explained that concerning too much on the future can cause stress and concerning too much on the past, depression. Instead, focusing on the present is related to happiness: some studies say that exists a correlation between how a person feels and its state of mind. And mindfulness can help us to focus on the present without too much effort.

Escauriaza said that “the object of mindfulness is trying to focus on things by relaxing”. To prove it, he made the talk very participatory and put many examples to make clear how difficult is to pay attention while we are multitasking. Besides, the students learnt how to focus and concentrate through relaxing techniques as breathing.