I have always had intense powers of concentration. I remember studying in my dorm room at Occidental College with such intensity that when I looked up I was surprised to see that my roommate, Lafaid Johnson, had brought four of his friends into our living space and that they were having a party. Over the years, I have found ways to build up my levels of concentration even further despite the increasing stress of family and business life. Here is what I have found works best for me, in order of priority.
1. Play Music in the Background
On the surface, it is counter intuitive to think that listening to music would improve someone’s concentration. After all, noise is one of the biggest things that distracts us from our tasks. I discovered the capacity of music to enhance my concentration when I was still in high school and found that I could not complete math problems, or my weekly column in the local paper, unless I had an FM radio station playing in the background. All in all, I think music works so well for improving my concentration for at least three reasons:
- It gives the part of of my brain that is not into grant writing something else to do while I concentrate on my work. Traditional eastern meditation uses this same trick. By breathing in a certain pattern, or counting your breaths, you end up quieting (organizing) your lower brain functions enough to develop a relaxing state of extreme mindfulness.
- I think it is important that musical sounds are organized and not random. Because they are so organized they naturally drown out the less predictable sounds that might distract me while I am writing a grant proposal. In fact, my use of music while I write seems to be most effective when I am listening to the same playlist – often over and over.
- In my case, I also think that music feeds my brain what it needs to hear to feel happy, energized and productive. In my case, I concentrate better with a mix of songs that have strong drum rhythms and passionate lyrics. For whatever reasons, the songs that work for me typically have a hint of sadness, righteousness and/or defiance.
- Listening to music makes it easier for me to lose track of all sounds and concentrate instead on the ideas I am communicating to the funder. Often, I do not realize that there is any music on at all in the background.
If you are curious to test the effectiveness of listening to the same music I listen to as I write, I have placed a link to my YouTube playlist in the article below.
Surprisingly, listening to music aids my concentration so much that I find I work well with listening to my YouTube playlist through my headphones while also having the local FM radio playing in the background at the exact same time. This second layer of audio distraction for my personal cone of silence features radio broadcasts from commercial free radio stations. For what it is worth, I don’t listen to music while I am painting, only while I’m writing for work.
2. Create a Distraction To-Do List
Often people report that their concentration is interrupted by distracting thoughts, thoughts of other projects that they should be working on too. To reduce the distraction caused by these concerns over uncompleted promises or activities, I always have a “to do” list to the right of my keyboard as I work on a grant application. This “to do” list is one of the tools I use to increase my levels of concentration. For example, if I have a nagging thought regarding something else I need to be doing, I invariably write it down on my list. As long as this nagging item is placed on my “to do” list (a list which might have 40 or 50 other items on it) my brain seems to stop worrying about the issue. I usually re-number this list every morning so that it helps me map out my day and move smoothly from one item to the next.
3. Pay Attention to My Boredom
In contrast to much of the on-line concentration advice which treats increasing your concentration levels as if it were a body building exercise, I have found it much easier to concentrate by limiting my writing to things that truly excite me. Consequently, if I find myself getting bored writing a grant proposal, I do not force myself to concentrate on it. Instead, I interpret my feelings of boredom as a subconscious warning that I am not really working on something important. This practice has saved me from a lot of unnecessary work. I typically take a break if I get bored and then return to the page with a fresh realization that I was getting off topic or not really addressing the questions posed by the request for proposals.
4. Reduce Environmental Distractions to a Minimum
I think it is important to minimize environmental distractions mainly because it takes so long to get back into a task after you break away from it. For me, the worst distractions are client phone calls, e-mails or cell phone alerts. As far as possible, I turn all of these distractions off when I am working on a grant. I maintain an office outside of our home so that I can work without household distractions such as the television, the refrigerator, the dishes and the laundry. To further reduce distractions, I have always found it much easier to work at night, often deep into the morning hours. I work so well late at night that I am often the only one left in the building. I will exit my office and find that the hallway is pitch black until the motion sensors detect my presence and turn back on the lights. Finally, I try to eliminate from my office anything that would take me out of the zone of concentration that I need for grant writing. This means I have a comfortable chair, a fan or a heater to fine tune my office temperature, an ergonomically correct keyboard and correct keyboard height. To maintain hydration, I always have water, coffee or prodigious supplies of Diet Coke on top of my desk.
5. Use the Correct Techniques
If you apply the correct techniques for high speed, lightening grant writing, then I think you will also find yourself subtly reinforcing the concentration building techniques I have mentioned above. For example, using voice recognition software reduces boredom by speeding up the creation of words and phrases. (I don’t listen to music when I’m dictating, however, because I want to reduce the word recognition error rate.)
Never rewriting something the same day I write it keeps me from getting bored and uncomfortable while breaking potential bad habits such as indecision and procrastination.
Researching only after I have written the first draft prevents me from wasting time on unnecessary web-surfing which produces research which will not end up in the grant proposal no matter what.
Preparing a project innovator form and crafting a winning message for the charity allows me to have greater confidence that I am doing the right thing to make the best possible case for their cause.
6. Waiting to the Last Minute is Dysfunctional
In my experience, most people develop a sense of concentration the wrong way, by waiting until their deadline is uncomfortably close. Under these circumstances, they force themselves to concentrate out of necessity. Ironically, this will work. Waiting until the last minute may actually give you an advantage if it generates a tight, internal consistency in your grant proposal, a consistency which arises primarily because you do not have time to rethink and revise your responses. Despite these advantages, I think developing concentration by waiting to the last moment is ultimately dysfunctional on a number of levels.
The main price of waiting to the last minute is that you have less time to share the document and get the input of others. I have found that feedback always improves a document. It makes you aware of holes in your argument, alerts you to wording that may be misunderstood, and makes you more sensitive to political constraints. Another cost is that you are more likely to make errors which you will not have time to fix. I have also found that waiting until the last minute may cause me to simply reuse boilerplate material because I am in such a hurry. The problem is that the reader can usually identify when the boilerplate material starts and stops because of the way it exposes errors in internal consistency.
All in all, I think you will be better off listening to music whenever you write a grant. It will motivate you to get started, it will insulate you from environmental distractions, and it will give your mind something to do while you knock out that urgent grant proposal.
