Do You Know the Best Time of Day You Focus?

A number of women transitioning from perimenopause to menopause and beyond complain that they are unable to focus as well as they did when they were younger. Much of the problem has to do with hormone fluctuation. However, there are a few hacks you can try to mitigate these problems just to name a few. Give the hacks a try and if you have any questions I invite you to get back to me and we can talk or comment below.

SYNC YOUR BODY CLOCK

Lining up your most mentally taxing tasks with your natural peaks of focus is key to concentration. Research has found that, on average, these high points occur around 10am in the morning and around 2-3pm in the afternoon.

COOL YOUR LIGHTING

You might want to paint your walls a shade of blue or green, or invest in a tinted light bulb for your desk. That’s because we work best at certain temperatures (usually 16–24°C/60–75°F), visual warmth can have an impact too.

Researchers at the Technical University of Valencia tested 160 people in virtual reality classrooms, painted in different shades of 12 cold-hued colours (greens and blues) and 12 warm-hued ones (oranges and reds). They measured pupils’ attention by asking them to click on their mouse when they heard a specific sound, while also ignoring a series of other sounds.

The results: people performed better on the attention task (and a memory test too) when they were in rooms decorated in cooler colors, compared to the warmer ones. Using electroencephalogram (EEG) machines, the researchers also monitored the participants’ brain activity and heart rates throughout, which showed that people had different levels of physiological arousal in different colored rooms.

The activation of the sympathetic nervous system in the cool-hue rooms was “appropriate to the maintenance of higher alertness and cognitive performance,” the researchers said.

White walls, meanwhile, may be especially distracting. Studies, including one by the Lund Institute of Technology and another by the University of Nevada, have found that children taught in classrooms with white walls found it harder to maintain concentration. As the founder of the Color Research Institute of America, Louis Cheskin, said in 1947: “White walls…. are an optical strain and a psychological hazard!”

PICTURE YOUR FUTURE SELF

Imagining your future selves at the end of the day – where you are, what you’re doing, who you’re with – can seriously help stop you getting side-tracked, according to research.

All you need to do, says Mark, is think about how “at 7pm at night you want to feel rewarded and fulfilled, and you want to visualize yourself being with family and friends or reading and relaxing.”

She says: “Having a strong visualization like that can help curtail that urge to check social media or do email because you have this goal of where you want to be at the end of the day.”

Similar future-self visualizations (including staring at photos of your own digitally aged faces) have been shown to increase the desire to save for retirement and to eat more healthily too. But if you’re simply looking to focus in the present moment, it’s best to start your day by imagining how you want to feel at its end.