How to Improve Focus and Concentration

With our attention span getting shorter and shorter, we need more help than ever when trying to focus. Whether you’re still in school finishing up important exams, or at the workplace, dealing with delicate situations that require full attention, the ability to focus is a prerequisite for success. But, which tricks help us focus on our tasks and which ones are useless? Let’s find out:

How to Improve Focus and Concentration

Fresh diet

Have you ever been to a big celebration where you overate and then felt drowsy and sleepy? If you have, then you know just what kind of effect a lot of food can have on your body. However, besides overeating, you should also be careful about what it is you are eating. Heavy, highly processed foods will make all the blood rush from your brain to your stomach to help digestion, and while sugary foods might give you an instant surge of energy and help you short-term, they will make your energy level plummet, and you will be left craving for more, which will then lead to even more overeating. Therefore, the best thing you can do is to eat fresh, light foods, like salads, fruit, and fish, throughout your work process because they will keep you full without taking too much energy away for digestion.

Stay hydrated

Similar to what we eat, what we drink is also important. One of the first signs of dehydration is the inability to focus, and you might have that manifest well before a dry mouth, so you won’t even know that you need to hydrate until it’s already well past your optimal concentration point. So, keep a bottle of water with you at all times and take regular sips to make sure you are optimally hydrated and aware.

Find your tune

Not all people like listening to music while working, but if you’ve never tried it before, you might be surprised. Listening to something through high-quality headphones, like high-end Focal Utopia, will allow you to isolate yourself from outside noise and distractions, allowing you to focus on your work easier. Furthermore, given that four our actions we are very much dependent on our surrounding, just like a running playlist will make you feel like running even if you hear it in a different setting, creating a playlist that you will listen to only when you are working or studying will help you concentrate on work when you hear it.

Have a plan

Sometimes, if you are working on a bigger project, it can seem like you are going to work on it forever. As a result, you might lose focus and motivation easier. If that happens, the best thing you can do is to give yourself a solid plan to make sure you will not fall in the trap of looking round at distractions because you feel like you are going to be trapped in work forever. If you know, there are some other things, aside from work, that you want to do as well, set a schedule that will allow you to work for an hour and spend half an hour on other activities. This will help you stay focused because you will know that you will be doing other things soon and, thus, they won’t be a distraction anymore. On the other hand, if you simply can’t stop thinking about the distractions, do them first, or remove them from your surroundings, so that you can dedicate your full focus to the work that needs to be done.

Moreover, improving concentration is also something that is built overtime. If you’ve had good concentration when you were small, you won’t have issues in your adult life. However, making small changes and sticking to them conscientiously will help you turn them into a habit, and you will be more focused an productive before you know it.

Diana Smith is a full time mom interested in topic related to fitness and alternative medicine. In her free time she enjoys exercising and preparing healthy meals for her family.

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