Buildings Highways in your Brain

Your brain have the wonderful property of being able to adapt, to create new couplings. This is the way we learn new things. We can practice them and make them permanent by repetition. Movements, languages and all other types on knowledge can be made permanent in such a way that you do not even have to think to perform the task associated with the knowledge; to speak the language or perform an acrobatic maneuver. In certain cases it is even necessary for the task to be fully automatic for it to be at all successful.

This can be visualized as a road in your brain. Creating it usually takes a lot of practice and a lot of repetitions. And even when the road is build it has a lot of built-in crossroads. These are places where your thoughts can drift away from the destination they were intended to go. If you, for example, try to perform a difficult movement and come to think about something else in the middle of the execution you do not succeed very well in completing it. This is equally true for all knowledge, not just movements. Studies of any kind are another excellent example.

You need to be focused to stay on the road you intend to follow. Most people fail to understand the importance of developing your ability to stay on the road. They keep buildings new roads, learning more and more things. But the can never be really effective because they keep drifting away in different directions and have to get back on track again. An average person can keep his/her focus for about 10 seconds. When the focus is lost it has to be regained. This happens very fast but it dramatically reduces the average speed toward the destination you are heading for.

A good way of training your focus is to try to think about one thing only, do it for at least 10 minutes and repeat that exercise. You can for example focus on a candle flame for 10 minutes every day. As any learning process it takes time to recouple/uncouple your nerve cells. But if you train you will become better in staying on track, keeping your focus for prolonged times. In time the roads in your brain will become like fast flowing Highways that takes you where you want, without any detours on the way.