Hi dude,
sakiro wrote:
Is really any difference (and what is it?) in concentration, attention, focus and alertness .. ?

I'm surprised you didn't put 'orientation' in the list too  :  )  Terminology in neuroscience is distressingly inaccurate, largely because mapping the brain and mind has not been the easiest of tasks before current tech was available and partly because international communication is a relatively new thing. Just like the natural history guys, we are finding that some things have been 'discovered' four or five times and given different names in different places.

Worse, many haven't quite gotten the hang of this problem yet and you'll find (for example) “stress, fear, nervousness, panic, insecurity, apprehension, suspicion and worry” ALL referred to as 'anxiety' and many of the people you ask will define what these terms mean in different ways.

We will all have to cope with this crap until there are clear international definitions, but we can stull get the idea of what's going on via analogy as follows:

...Imagine you have a movie camera. What you point the camera at is what you're paying attention to, and it will shoot whatever you point at. When you direct the camera to continue tracking/following one subject, considering that alone and avoiding other distractions, that's concentration. Attention is about where you position & direct the body and senses, concentration is about where you position and direct the mind.
When you try to shoot a subject with the greatest clarity possible and show all the details clearly, even though that makes surrounding objects & background context fuzzy, that's focus (and actually focus is looking like its more an N4 skill these days).
Alertness is the camera operator not falling asleep.

Simple summary:
look at it = attention (N1)
don't fall asleep at the camera = alertness (N2)
stay with it/follow it/avoid distractions = concentration (N3)
zoom in and observe it in greater clarity = focus (N4?)
They all need different neurotransmitters. They all employ different selections of brain networks.

So applying these to your question:

[s]
when you are reading something, and you mind start the "mental chatter" about other things and you lost the train of thought etc .. is because of a bad attention or concentration?

You'll see that loss of concentration (due to that distraction) causes attention to drift. If attention skills are weak it will be harder to achieve concentration (all skills build on those that came before) but remember if attention drifts it's sometimes for a good reason (eg, the book may be boring your ass off).

[s]
i read some studys when it says that kind of activity (multitask) could harm attention skills? like the brain can only "process" one thing at a time?

If the brain could only process one thing at a time we couldn't stay alive. We multitask all the time just to maintain homeostasis, but thankfully we are able to sweat AND pee at the same time  :  ) 
Quality of processing and performance in multitasking depends on the nature, not number of the tasks. Multitasking can be difficult or deleterious if tasks distract from each other (due to trying to use the same network or conflicting networks/transmitters.) We can't speed up and slow down at the same time, and if we try to do a mixture of tasks that demand this (neurochemically) there's trouble coming, just as surely as if we try to swallow and breathe at the same time.

You wrote:
I'm the classical guy that start daydreaming about something and get "distracted" a lot .. like i feel hard to "filter" the outside stimulus .. so i'm interested in this topic ..

You could be short of dream sleep, but daydreaming will catch you up on defragging. I'm not sure you mean daydreaming though (because there shouldn't be thoughts going on during daydreaming; and this sounds more like reverie or reflection).

If distraction happens a lot, maybe the tasks you are getting distracted from were boring you?
Mindfulness works really well for me too and I'm beginning to use it more and more. It's almost like “silent CBT”  LOL  :  )
Best,
AR

Perhaps a way to look at multitasking is whether the different tasks demand your attention or whether they occupy it.
Say I'm programming, which is the primary task, and also either watching TV or listening to music. The TV demands attention far more, partially because there is a plot to follow, so the TV affects my ability to program far more. It also depends what difficulty the tasks are - checking my emails doesn't challenge me much, so checking my emails while watching TV is more appropriate (unless I'm watching something really gripping, which would make watching it the primary task).
I listen to music all the time, although lately, in a 'wiping sentiment' frame of mind, I have increasingly not wanted to listen to some of the stuff that I used to listen to, spcifically depressing/emo music. A lot of bands say depressing stuff is easier to write, and that cheerful music tends to be cheesy. That's a bit of a bleak outlook.
There is also the possibility of listening to music with bizzare/unintentionally hilarious/incomprehensible/indeciferable/no lyrics.

Mindfullness meditation certainly is supposed to be good for concentration, as are drugs which increase the level of norephenine (in the short term), as is not having 50 tabs open on your browser.

Sakiro Wrote:
sometimes i feel dificult to concentrate because i get distracted from stimulus of my own thought

LOL  :  ) This is my major nemesis.
The universe is all way too interesting, and I am a seven year old  :  )  Everything real demands attention, even when the 'main subject' fascinates me.

Working @ home doesn't help. Here I am staring out the window thinking, wow that's intriguing... if that chemical is an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, but this one is -oooh look, a squirrel! Wow the way they move is just like a wave! Where's the vid cam? If I render the footage behind a graph I can work out the amplitude and frequency...
...Flamingoed up.
Best,
AR

It seems to be not so much about what demands are made on attention as what demands are made on the same particular types of attention. Whistling a song you know well demands a different sort of attention to mountain climbing so it's easy to do both at the same time and get both right. It's not at all easy to work out a difficult new math problem or conduct an emotionally loaded conversation  while climbing mountains OR while whistling a song. It's also not a good idea to try  :  )
If more than one task demands the same networks' resources then you either have a queue, or you have a flamingo-up* which is what I think you're noticing.

OTOH, passively listening to music while working on a hard maths problem I think is ok, as if I get into the flow I will automatically be paying less attention to the music, while it keeps other parts of the brain occupied.

Input control makes a heck of a difference to progress and the more you implement it, the faster you'll grow. It actually becomes quite a fun challenge; spotting dodgy input and replacing it, plus it gets easier to do all the time.

I would question the musical integrity of anyone who only wants to write 'easy' stuff that will sell fast... I would suspect they are in the music BUSINESS rather than the MUSIC business.


I don't want to live in a fantasy, ignoring all the bad things that happen, but equally ... to a large extent it's only a problem if I let it be a problem. Maybe other people are irrational and believe in homoeopathy, but that's their choice, it doesn't have to affect me and the best thing I can do is to politely explain what science is (I realise that sounds patronising). That and find intelligent people to hang out with and stop reading angry one-sided rants on the internet! 

Re music, perhaps I used the wrong phrasing - I meant that if I think of happy music a large proportion seems to be cheesy commercial pop music, and just because depressing music can be easier to write doesn't mean that those bands are too lazy to put effort into songwriting.
It's just occurred to me that I haven't listened to 'the dark side of the moon' in a while...

Fractal wrote:
I don't want to live in a fantasy, ignoring all the bad things that happen,

Well that makes you an exception!  :  )  Most people spend their entire lives living in fantasy land and never even know they're in a fiction.

[f]
but equally ... to a large extent it's only a problem if I let it be a problem. Maybe other people are irrational and believe in homoeopathy, but that's their choice,

Sometimes it's ignorance rather than irrationality. It isn't irrational to believe homoeopathy works if you get better every time you use it; it's just ignorance of the placebo effect. So let's not label people dumb when maybe they only need some extra information?

[f]
the best thing I can do is to politely explain what science is (I realise that sounds patronising).

...It's only patronising if we insist on explaining stuff to people who haven't asked us to and don't really want to know.

[f]
That and find intelligent people to hang out with and stop reading angry one-sided rants on the internet!

Well you can learn a lot about stupidity from analysing one sided rants, but that's no excuse to join in  :  )  Good luck with the Search for Terrestrial Intelligence; I'm beginning to think SETI has better odds..

[f]
Re music, perhaps I used the wrong phrasing - I meant that if I think of happy music a large proportion seems to be cheesy commercial pop music, and just because depressing music can be easier to write doesn't mean that those bands are too lazy to put effort into songwriting. It's just occurred to me that I haven't listened to 'the dark side of the moon' in a while...

I'd classify 'happy' music as music that induces us to release serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins etc. If it can't do that, it's not happy music. Inducing sentiment is the aim of most cheesy pop music.
You can tell what transmitters are being released by looking at the brainwave patterns, or if you know yourself very well, GSR.
If a song sounds 'happy' to your conscious mind but your brain is still thumping away in beta rhythm, it's a false positive based on sentiment.
If you test your response to all your favorite tunes you can label your music collection by neurotransmitter and choose what you listen to according to what you'd like to feel  :  )
Best,
AR

Sakiro wrote:
the only problem is in my case i get "caught up" and kills my productivity and i don't do the other 50% part .. i mean .. put to action that thoughts/ideas etc.

The point is, you've noticed the problem. That's the first step towards solving it. From here you can look at the things that 'catch you up' and practise some input control to avoid distractions. I moved to an area in the house with no squirrel backdrop  :  )

You can arrange your work space so that everything you may find yourself looking at reminds you to stay on the subject. You can take a short break anytime you feel you're getting bored or stuck. You can do exercises that will improve your attention span. Here's one:

Sit facing a screen and play any video with the sound off (or a TV with anything on will do, but make sure to mute the sound.) Now fix your attention on one corner of the screen (say the top right) and say aloud everything recognizable that comes into that corner (it's best to do this when on your own)  :  )
Your may end up saying stuff like “blue sky/ spiky shape/ bit of a word/ someones ear/ hair in the wind/ car roof/...” and so on; whatever appears in the corner.

When you can do this without being distracted by the image on the entire screen, you go to level 2 and do it with the sound on. Level 3 you learn to do it silently in your mind (just think the things in words instead of speaking them aloud) and if you get that far you'll find your attention is much more controllable than it used to be.
Best,
AR