Tips for Improving Your Focus and Concentration Skills
One of the things you’ll discover as an adult is that the older you get, the more demands are for you to improve your focus. The reason oftentimes is because one is caught up in so many activities. This makes it difficult to give 100% focus or concentration on a particular thing. So, do not feel bad if you are experiencing similar issues.
But this should not be an excuse for not improving your concentration or increasing your focus.
Because there are gains of improving one’s memory and focus. For instance, surmounting challenging tasks at work. Also studying effectively, or managing a group of stakeholders in a program whose expectations require that one pays acute concentration to the activities of various project managers. Even increasing one’s focus and concentration is a prerequisite for success.
Below are a few tips for improving one’s focus and concentration skills.
Get A Diary
Whether or not you call it a journal—get a notebook and put down all the deliverables, goals, or objectives. Don’t just memorize it in your head. The faintest ink, they say, is better than the sharpest brain. When you write down what needs to be done or thought about, you become intentional about it. The more you dedicate the time you need to address it.
Having various items in your head alone creates a false sense of accomplishment. Thus creating a vacuum in your real life for frivolities to occupy. Having a diary also gives you the opportunity to quickly write down new ideas. This would have exhausted you mentally to recall. When the idea is written in a book, you can easily focus on what the idea requires you to do.
Maintain Good Dietary And Physical Lifestyle
What and when do you eat? Eating heavy meals for breakfast before a meeting may cause fatigue. Given the increased metabolism required on the food by your body. A light meal can help you to improve concentration and increase your memory. Also, eating late at night may result in a reluctance to wake early. Waking early being reported to be correlated with the increased focus. Little wonder why tea and coffee are often served in meetings at work. Also, meetings requiring critical engagements are scheduled for the early hours of the day. What about regular exercise? Exercising is beneficial for the effective circulation of blood. The blood carries oxygen and glucose to all cells in the body, including the brain cells. This, too, helps to improve focus and concentration.
Give It Your Time
There is only one way to focus or concentrate on an activity when all else has been observed. It is to focus. Give it your time. By giving it your time, we mean eliminating all other distractions around you. The same way you would not think to log on to social media when you are taking a proctored exam.
For instance, is the way to eliminate distractions when you have a task to be completed. Spend time working on that project, even if the results are not forthcoming as desired. The learning one would discover here is that consistency improves focus. As more and more of your time is invested into a fixed activity, your focus and concentration on that particular activity improves.
Practice Active Listening
Ever asked what the hardest thing in communications is? It is the decoding of a message. But oftentimes the original message is lost, especially when there is an interpreter. But active listening helps to improve concentration and increase memory. And you know-how—for instance, when you watch a movie without a subtitle.
You find you are glued to the screen and are paying acute attention than when the movie is subtitled. What you would learn is that you would take fewer short breaks. As the movie progresses when it is without a subtitle than when it is with a subtitle. With active listening, concentration is absolute, and memory is improved.
Change Your Environment
By environment, we mean your immediate surroundings. Is there a high noise level where you are? The chances are high that you will struggle to execute that task or responsibility as you ought to with noise pollution around you. Or is the place too cold? You may find yourself spending time taking care of your vulnerabilities than actually concentrating on what you need to do. At such times, it is best advised to change your environment. If adaptation becomes expensive, so you can increase your focus.