7 Useful Tips for Improving Your Mental Focus
Concentration is the ability to focus on a specific task or meeting a specific goal without getting shaken. Most of us fail while concentrating on a difficult task, challenging work, important project or during studies. Especially in children, they can’t focus on a single topic straight for 10 minutes.
Science claims that there are tablets to improve concentration however I don’t wish to promote them. What I believe is, with a few mindful exercises you can improve your mental focus and stop your chatter brain to distract you while doing certain tasks. Enhance your attention span, the length of time that you can stick to a particular task. With these simple tips of attentiveness, you can improve your focus and strengthen your mental wellness.
What Makes your Focus Shaky?
There can be numerous reasons behind a distracted mind. Some brains are so vibrant that they can’t stick to one thing at a time. Especially in kids, they can’t focus on a specific task or concentrate on something for very long.
Age Factor
Age plays an important role as it takes time to train your mind to focus on a specific task or object. Specifically, for kids and old age people, it becomes difficult to concentrate on something. Young minds are so bubbly that the pop on different objects quickly and old brains are so full of memories that they have something or other related to every object they see.
Lack of Sleep
Lack of sleep also affects concentration as your mind swings to a bunch of thoughts when it is under pressure. Mental pressure due to any sort of reason can disturb your sleep and you start getting dreams or panic attacks.
Head of Brain Injury
Many a time, head or brain injury may also hamper your concentration power. Issues like short term memory loss, forgetting things you just did or plan to do are symptoms of such mental focus issues. Did this happen to you? You plan to grab something from the kitchen and when you entered, you forgot what it was!
Other Issues
There are several other reasons that can be held accountable for your mental focus and concentration. Family issues, dip in business, other illness, lost job, career related issues, and various other aspects that can disturb you and your focus towards something. Let’s learn how you can strengthen your brain and improve your focus.
1.Train Your Brain
There are certain games and activities that are interesting and addictive enough to grab your attention for a longer duration. These games can improve your focus and concentration to a certain extent. If you spend 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week on memory games like sudoku, jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles, chess, or word searches/scrambles, you can really enhance your brain boosters to mentally focus on things.
2.Eliminate Distractions
When you are at work, there are a lot of distractions around you who may not let you mentally focus on a particular task. These distractions can be your friends, mobile phones, message alerts, break bubbles, popping emails, or could be people crossing your workstation. To focus well on a task in hand, you need to ensure that you keep away from these distractions as much as possible.
3.Stop Multitasking
When you multitask, you keep on shifting your focus from one activity to another resulting poor concentration and reduced quality of work. Multitasking is an art and if you do it right, you may outshine else you will out shine! When you put your brain at work, focus on reaching destinations rather touching milestones.
4.Live in the Moment
If your brain flows through the thoughts, if your brain is still stuck with the past or you are a daydreamer, you will need to keep on reminding yourself to live the present moment. Continuously focusing and reminders will work to bring the focus and concentration back to the current task and inculcate the habit of concentration.
5.Practice Mindfulness Meditation
Mindfulness meditation is trending these days as the results have proven the worth practising it. It helps you in focusing on something and improvise concentration. This practice will train you on aspects like how to meditate, how to focus on something with open or closed eyes, how to put your chatter-brain to rest and how to stop brain shifts.
6.Make your Work More Interesting
If you got to do the same thing every day, you will need to figure out ways to make your work more interesting. Figure out ways to add creativity to the same task that will keep you motivated and focused to continue the same task forever. There are different ways to meet the same task, choose wisely that matches your interest.
7.Take a Break
It is essential to take regular breaks on distinct intervals to refresh your brain and give it the power to concentrate and focus back with full strength. These small power breaks withdraw your attention from the main task and energize your brain to come back to the task with full attention. Small Tea Breaks, Coffee Breaks, Short Walks, or short naps can strengthen your mental focus to achieve your goals.
Summing Up
Apart from these practices, you can also nurture your brain to boost focus and concentration with supplements like Omega-3 Fatty Acids, walnuts, Avocados, Chocolates, etc. regular exercise and sound sleep of around 8 hours a day is also one of the biggest factors to improve your mental focus and enhance concentration.