Aids in concentration:

(1) Be working on a problem that is important and/or that you like.

(2) Work in a room with few distractions so that the work is the most interesting thing there. Making progress can help holding the concentration.

(3) For most of my best work, I can't do it all in one sitting and have to return off and on over days or weeks. So, have to keep up 'concentration' by returning frequently enough. A way to do this is just to get quite 'immersed' in the problem.

(4) If thoroughly immersed in the problem, then 30 minutes thinking while horizontal on a sofa can sometimes give a 'turbo boost' that will get you over the top!

In part I learned how to concentrate by working in mathematics, from plane geometry through Ph.D. and since. An advantage here is that, with proofs and counterexamples, often can tell if the work is correct and, thus, test the concentration techniques. The exercises in Kelley's 'General Topology' help build 'character' and maybe concentration!

To get good results, it's also important to make good use of the concentrated effort. Here in original work in mathematics I found:

(1) Look at some very simple special cases first and see how those go.

(2) Accumulate a lot of intuitive views.

(3) With these views, have some wild bright ideas and test them with some simple examples; thus, begin to delineate what is true and false.

(4) To save time, do the work mostly between ears and write little or nothing until have some significant results; yes, this is easy since mostly the important derivations are simple and not long manipulations that go for pages.

(5) Look for some general, simplifying ideas; these can lead to stronger and more general results.

(6) Don't get stuck, and one way is to climb back up to 40,000 feet to the big picture again. Indeed, don't descend to some particular ground level details too soon.

The A. Wiles (Fermat's last theorem) description of going from room to room, turning the lights on one room at a time, was also good.

This is the phonological loop, or more specifically, the phonological buffer store. In my marriage, I get called out on it all the time .

"There is time enough for everything in the course of a day if we do but one thing at a time, but there is not time enough in a year if we try to do two things at a time."

Thanks for posting this.

thoughts are a disease in the yogi world, in the same sense as worry or anxiety. having no thoughts allows one to see what is, without prejudice or limitation.

being a witness of one's thoughts leads to becoming aware of awareness itself, awareness without object, i.e. pure subject, and that opens a door into what people call enlightenment, being aware of the self while being aware of the world.