Mental focus and concentration is something that can be considered as an inbuilt quality of our body. Strangely, it is purely a segment that can be fully controlled by human behaviour. That means it can be improved, it can be increased and sharpened and vice versa as well i.e. One can easily deteriorate its quality as well. In this blog post, we will be checking out each and every aspect and provide you with a complete detailed set guide of how to increase and improve mental focus.
As mentioned above mental focus is something that can be easily sharpened and improved by applying a few routine changes, tips and tricks. Similarly, one can easily deteriorate mental health’s quality by acquiring few bad and irrelevant activities. This state of mind is very well voluntarily and can be changed by human behaviour.
This means we can easily reverse this process. If we have a bad mental focus then we can easily apply few settings in our brain and day to day activities and improve our focus. Similarly, those who already have a great focus can also follow the steps and sharpen their focus more and more. This way they can easily see the change in their concentration level.
So without wasting much time let’s dive deep into the proven relevant steps which anyone can apply to increase and improve mental focus. These are very basic and easy steps that I can assure anyone can follow and implement easily. You just need some self-discipline and determination.
Meditate Regularly
Meditation is the best and foremost important component that you should include in your daily routine. During the initial stages, it becomes a tough nut to crack but with practice and consistency, you can develop and form this habit brilliantly.
Meditating for at least 15-30 minutes per day can immensely increase and improve mental focus and concentration.
Meditation can strengthen areas of your brain responsible for memory, learning, attention and self-awareness. Over time, mindfulness meditation can increase cognition, memory, focus, concentration and attention. It can also decrease emotional reactivity, stress, anxiety and depression.
The results show that meditation can significantly affect hormones and neurotransmitters such as cortisol, dehydroepi- androstrone, serotonin, melatonin, and epinephrine.
Stay Away from Drugs and Bad Addictions
Drugs and Bad Addictions primarily includes alcohol, tobacco products, chemicals that change the way a person’s body works, methamphetamines (e.g. MDMA) and other stimulants such as cocaine and heroin, non-medical prescribed drugs, excessive pornography addiction and similar kinds of stuff. They not only damage your physical and mental health but are proven to deteriorate your focus and concentration immensely.
Drug abuse is a serious factor in memory loss and a lack of concentration, which can affect aspects of your life you may not have considered. Drugs can make it hard for you to study, improve your skills at work, learn and retain new concepts, work and even pay attention to what’s happening around you.
The best possible way is to absolutely cut them off from your daily routine if you are fully determined to improve your concentration and provide your mental and physical health with a treat. ALWAYS STAY AWAY from these types of substances and addictions.
Remove Disturbance while Working
It’s absolutely important that you must enter a zero disturbance zone while working. This not only improves your quality of work but also improves your focus. It has been a proven fact that multitasking may decorate your concentration power and decrease your focus level.
So if you are working on something focus on the working part, if you are reading absolutely focus on reading, if you are writing absolutely focus on writing. If you are getting disturbed and your attention is shifting to somewhere else it is highly advisable to remove the obstacle from your working space.
If you are someone who has the tendency to check his/ her phone every time then you can put your phone on silent mode and move it from your work desk while you are working on something. This is the best possible remedy which you can adapt to improve your focus laser-sharp. The same applies to all the objects or activities that make you diverted and breaks your focus.
Either you can prefer to wear ear caps or noise cancellation headphones (without music / do not play any music) sometimes just to remove the outer noise and disturbances.
Apply POMODORO Technique
According to Wikipedia, The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. It uses a timer to break work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. Each interval is known as a Pomodoro, from the Italian word for ‘tomato’, after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer Cirillo used as a university student.
The technique has been widely popularized by dozens of apps and websites providing timers and instructions. Closely related to concepts such as timeboxing and iterative and incremental development used in software design, the method has been adopted in pair programming contexts.
This technique can actually be very useful in developing your focus and improve your efficiency. Try to at least repeat this process 6-7 times a day and soon you will be realising how your focus is improving.
Take Breaks
After all, we all are human beings and not machines. In fact, if a machine is put in an ON mode for 24 hours 7 days a week 365 days a year soon that machine will also stop working. It will lose all its functionalities. The same concept applies to us also.
Try to take a break from your daily routine for at least a couple of days a month. This break for 2-3 days per month can tremendously help you to bring back your focus, help you in discovering yourself, energise you and bring your concentration back when you start working again.
This break can include short trips, spending time with nature, spending quality time with your friends. Your focus generally degrades due to your daily monotonous routine. These types of quick and short breaks can actually break this monotonous pattern and prove to be a great energiser for your mind and soul.
Read Non-Fictional Books
Try reading quality and self-help books for at least 30 minutes to 60 minutes per day. You can opt to choose spiritual books, non-fictional books, inspiring, self-development and self-help books.
You won’t believe it but trust me, a single good book can change your whole life. Just make sure while you are reading there is no disturbance around you and try to minimise all sorts of distractions.
This way you will be able to replenish your focus, become more meditative and improve your concentration power.
Stop Scrolling Reels and News Feeds
You might consider this point a “crazy point”. Often each and everyone spends half of their time-wasting in scrolling feeds, reels and videos on several social media platforms and it becomes too late to realise this fact that you have become addicted to this type of condition.
Try to minimise this behaviour as much a possible. Scrolling constantly increases your body impatience and this sooner or later starts to reflect in your behaviour. The 15-20 seconds videos and reels act as dopamine (the feel-good hormone) for you which later on becomes an addiction.
Behaviours such as mindlessly scrolling through different social media platforms are linked to difficulties in remembering things and having interrupted attention spans. Research from Stanford University in California has suggested that such behaviours may affect what is called our episodic memory.
These are few tips that you should definitely apply in your day to day activities. Be assured that if you follow these small steps every day and challenge yourself for the next 60 days you will completely become a different personality very soon.
Always remember, if you lack focus and concentration you will lack confidence and if you lack confidence you cannot do any task or cannot accomplish your goals in an effective manner and efficient way.
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