[Procyona]

How does doing many things at once and one thing at a time differ? How can you train attention to both?

When I am doing many things at once, I notice that my attention jumps quite randomly from one thing to another. Like this I am constantly, and naturally changing the task I do at any time point, but don't need so much effort to continue with the tasks I had stopped to do. This gives me time to process tasks, even when I am doing something else.

In training I need to concentrate on one thing only, however, and the same process prevents me from working 100 %. So, attention jumps makes it harder to concentrate on important tasks. But, at the same time we are learning to do many things at the same time, like cordinate whole body movement instead just hands of legs, and using defence and attack at the same time.

I don't know if there is a way to combine both process', but concentrating on one thing at a time can be trained with being aware what I do right here and now. With doing many things at once, I need to think them as one task.   

[Victor]

I Hope, I've understood your question correctly.
The answer is relax! When you starting thinking about everything you do, your brain will explode. Just relax and don't focus on yourself.
Wing Chun is your reaction on the opponent's action, but isn't a result of what are you thinking.   

[Procyona]

Thank you Victor. Even if you did not understand the question, your answer fits it anyway

If you don't focus on yourself, what do you focus on? Aren't we here to train ourselves?   

[Сифу Юрий Марченко]

Dear both, one thing does not exclude another... Really, I am not going to talk much, but we working with our partner we are learning how to cooperate with others, it is very important not only in training room, but also in the commun life. When you practice alone the wing chun forms you are learning you focus more on yourself, improving your breath practice, technical skills ect.   

[Gra-ach]

When you're doing several things at more or less the same time, you have to spend time to "adjust" to another task - recall input info, on what stage you stopped this task, what you were going to do next and so on. And when you're doing only one thing, you remember all these aspects and you don't need to switch attention from one thing to another.

And talking about total concentration - I don't think a person can fully concentrate on one thing for a long time. And by saying a long time I mean something like seveal minutes, without special training. Because our brain starts getting tired and it's hard to keep working.   

[Procyona]

Thank you Shining, I understand

Irene, if you say that the brain is not used to concentrate on one thing for long time without practise, do you know if this can be trained with some methods? In addition to consentrate on one thing at a time, the brain does not comply with too many tasks either. Therefore there is an optimum amount of tasks you can do at the same time. Most likely the the amount of tasks can become higher with practise.

One thing that hepls to work with many tasks at the same time is rapidly changing attention between tasks, and - according to researchers - a good way to train this is to play shooting or war games   

[Procyona]

[Haveunique]

[Procyona]

Weird, I am sure I had already posted an answer, but here it comes again

I have not played that much of real-time war games, but strategy games. The greatest difference between those are the amount of time you have to make a decition, and it seems you need to have fast pace action to work with multitasking.

I have also been playing a game called multitask 2 (you can find it here: http://www.kongregate.com/games/icylime/multitask-2)
in which you control 2-4 games at once and get points by time. I am yet to see emprovement (other than in game scores), but that might just take time.   

[Haveunique]

Hmm, I do see a point in entertainment For myself, though, I prefer to differentiate between very efficient ways of learning and entertaining activities, from which I can always learn something but where learning is not a primary goal.   

[Procyona]

Well, when ever I'm just entertaning myself, I feel like I'm slacking off and not doing anything useful. So I like games where I can find a meaning or something to work for   

[Haveunique]

Your right to see it so, Milla! Especially if there are unfinished things, in my experience this is what keeps me from relaxing.   

[Procyona]

Currently I am working on scanning my body. It is pretty easy to do this when I close my eyes, but not so when I for instance write on a computer, or do something else I have to concentrate on. It seems impossible to do both at the same time, at first, but even miracles like that can happen once I set my mind into it.   

[Haveunique]

We are where our attention is   

[Procyona]

Well said And where our attention is, defines how we feel.