Learning techniques on how to better focus may greatly benefit you as technological distractions take over the world. Some of these distractions come in the form of digital notifications, while others are a symptom of biological adaptations which change the way our minds work.
In fact, Precision referenced a U.S. survey which found that 75% of people waste an eight-hour work day every week, due to procrastination from checking notifications.
Not only will this cause an inability to focus long term and ruin your attention span, but it can negatively affect your professional aptitude.
Let your focus define not who you are, but who you want to be.
You become what you think. And what you think, is determined by your focus depth. And so, the point of focus in this guide is to give you inspiration, aiming to improve your concentration and to prevent you from losing yourself. Let’s dive in.
Here are 7 tips on how to better focus, and improve your attention span:
1. Focus better by exercising often
If you’re looking for ways on how to focus better, you’ve got to first make sure you are exercising. This is especially true if you are a student. Getting regular exercise is a vital part of maintaining good health.
One reason you may have trouble concentrating is that your metabolism could be slow due to lack of exercise. Research shows that people who are more active have a greater attention span, and are able to process information more quickly (1).
You should consider exercising for at least 30 minutes per day to counter any cognitive and neurological issues you may be facing, in regard to memory.
A few other benefits of exercising regularly:
- Lowers high blood pressure
- Reduces panic attacks and anxiety
- Can help you quit smoking
- Helps you get the required 8 hours of sleep necessary for good health
- Improves A1C and blood sugar levels to prevent diabetes
- Improves heart health
It’s very interesting what research published in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) suggests:
Studies show that the active lifestyle of our early ancestors using locomotion and foraging may have demanded development of cognitive abilities for survival. During these early human stages, when new molecular changes of cognitive adaptation rose, there was a simultaneous engagement of energy transferring from the newer locomotive abilities (1).
In other words, as our ancestors rose on two feet about 6 to 3 million years ago, the molecular processes involved in walking and performing complex thoughts evolved to become dependent on each other. How cool is that?
This indicates that exercise helps to improve at least one focus type: focus influenced physically by strenuous movements.
Your focus determines your reality: A Technique To Reduce Distractibility
There are also mental exercises to improve concentration and memory, like the open monitoring method. This is basically a technique of living in the moment and not allowing your observations to stick to you.
In other words, it’s like watching clouds in the sky. You see them—so many shades, shapes, and colors, but you they never truly affect you because you don’t give them significance. Try it out. It takes about a month to see the benefits.
What’s the takeaway?
If you find that you are unable to focus, consider opting into some form of exercise. Research shows there is a direct correlation between the two. And while doing it won’t make you some focus guru overnight, it’s certainly a start.
2. How to improve your focus through meditation
If you’re looking for a relaxing way to improve your clarity, try to mediate for focus. Yoga is one form of meditation, and it’s practiced by millions of people around the world.
Check out these 10 yoga forms that are known to help improve your concentration.
Some people like silence while they meditate, but do whatever works for you. You can use music to help you focus, too. Whatever puts you in the mood, and helps you focus on the good things in life is all that matters.
Aim for 10-15 minutes of meditation every day in the morning and evening.
Doing this often can help you gather your thoughts, and it will train you to focus on very specific things for short intervals of time. It will especially help if you suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or have trouble getting lost in thought.
In fact, researchers at Harvard University claim that the mass of peoples’ minds are lost in thought 47% of the time. If you could reduce that by just 10%, it would give you an extra two hours of real productivity per day.
Here are a few ways you can meditate at home:
- Lie in bed or in a quiet room without distractions. Close your eyes and build a story in your head.
- Read a book for 30 minutes without distractions.
- Sit on your porch and dream of how to better achieve your goals.
- Lie on your lawn, face the Sun, and close your eyes while focusing on one topic very intensely. Imagine questions about that topic, then answer those questions. This method of reflection is powerful, and it teaches you to focus by answering questions which you already know the answers to.
Sure, these aren’t traditional forms of meditation, but they will help you achieve a similar result. And that result is that you will strengthen your mind by practicing intense bouts of concentration, which will eventually help you learn how to better focus.
What’s the takeaway?
The key in life is to focus on what you can control. And what you control, is determined by how much focus you put into it. So, if you are having problems with focus and memory retention, consider adding meditation into your life.
3. Improve concentration by memorizing random things
The power of memorization is tremendous. There are countless reasons why memorizing things can improve your ability to focus. They sort of coincide together—when you memorize something you are focusing intensely, and when you focus intensely you are prone to remember your subject of focus.
It really doesn’t matter what it is you’re studying; however, by nature, you will tend to memorize things which you have strong passions for.
For instance, I’ve always been passionate about learning science-related topics. I have an ability, they call it, to read in-depth bits of information and memorize them for indefinite periods of time.
These things tend to be topics that I actually want to learn about. And so, I remember even the smallest details and, basically, never forget them. I’ve simply re-wired by brain to where I can flip a switch into an intense state of focus.
This state becomes so resourceful that, not only am I learning, but I’m innovating at the same time. I’m becoming the owner of the information.
In phycology, they call it a flow state. It’s also interesting that they have found highly motivated people enter into high phase levels of this flow state.
Call it tunnel vision if you will. But it’s not quite that. It’s a fully-perceptive mental awareness where you learn to delegate your attention into multiple states, and it takes a lots of practice to master it.
My advice is to stay inspired and focus in you. Try a few self improvement techniques like becoming highly organized. Doing this will help to free up some brain power, so that you can put a little more effort into remembering things.
But don’t just remember them for the heck of it. Consider that everything you remember will help better sharpen your awareness and increase your focus assessing abilities.
What’s the takeaway?
If you’re wondering how to focus on yourself and your passions, try organizing your personal and professional life more. This will be a huge help in building your attention span, and it will help you succeed by letting you focus on your goals.
4. Tips to improve memory with reading
There are so many benefits of reading. One of them is that it’s an excellent exercise to improve your concentration and attention span. In fact, numerous studies show how reading a book leaves both short and long-term neurological connectivity effects in the brain.
Ever read a novel that you still think about to this day, and that has changed the way you think? I’m confident you have at least one book that has impacted you in such a way.
“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.” – William Styron, Conversations with William Styron.
It’s important that you learn how to focus on reading in between the lines. Only then can you allow a story to impact you emotionally.
In regard to memory retention and strengthening your ability to focus, there have been various tests performed which suggest physical changes in our brain due to reading.
There is a potential mechanism by which reading a story not only improves language processing regions in the brain, but that our brain’s sensorimotor regions are affected through embodied semantics (2).
In other words, placing yourself into the body of the protagonist is suspected to invoke real bodily sensations that mimic real world experiences.
This in turn can help you build a clarity of focus while reading which could reflect an experience as if you were having it in real life. Kind of creepy, but also fantastically real, which is awesome!
This phenomenon is heightened in children, which is why their emotional level of reading is so significant, to the point where it shapes and broadens their dreams.
What’s the takeaway?
If you’re looking for ways on how to improve your memory retention and concentration, try getting into the habit of reading as much as possible. Sure, movies are absorbing and moving, but books are magical.
So, next time you get started on a novel, consider the possibility that you are—in a physical sense, entering another universe—one within your own that can change who you are as a person.
5. How to find focus using fine details
If you’ve ever written a book, you’d quickly realize that including descriptive details is just as important as the story itself. Sure, it’s easy to pick up on the message of a story, but without details to bring that message to life, the story is just a shell.
Details are what make a perspective unique, and we tend to remember unique things.
Look at a snowflake, for example. What would you remember more: only the dark silhouette of the snowflake, or that same silhouette with a million colorful crystals protruding from it?
Likely, the one with the crystals. But it also depends on what color helps you focus more. Research suggests that low wavelength colors affect the brain in such a way, that they help to improve efficiency and focus. Green is one of them.
When the things we observe have details—like color, we are likely to take those details and relate them to experiences we’ve had, which in turn makes us remember those details.
Focusing on fine details is also something that may help you get people to like you. Because when you are aware of your surroundings and how others perceive you, it can help you better relate to them.
What’s the takeaway?
Learning how to better focus starts with being aware and paying mind to fine details. It may in fact, be the best way to improve memory retention in people who have problems with attention span.
6. Focus on good things by creating a to-do-list
Using to-do lists has been a topic of study for quite some time in regard to focus and productivity. In fact, studies date back to the 1920s and a European psychologist named Bluma Zeigarnik.
Through his work, the Zeigarnik Effect was founded. It demonstrates that the act of planning activities by writing to-do lists reduces brain power, and frees up mental space to commit to more tasks (3).
There have been more recent studies that prove this theory. The studies found that students who didn’t get to perform their warm-up activities performed poorly on following brainstorming activities.
I read an article by Time recently, and they referenced an interesting study by Microsoft. Here is what they found:
Since the year 2000 (near the start of the mobile revolution), the average attention span of human beings dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds.
This isn’t in relation to doing thorough tasks like studying, but rather it’s an average of your attention span when going about day-to-day activities, especially while surfing the internet.
Creating a to-do list and crossing off completed items frees up brain power, allowing you to focus better on tasks that require immediate focus.
The Zeigarnik Effect suggests that being interrupted mid-thought will invoke better memory of that thought at a later time. But, marking tasks as complete outweighs the burden of remembering an unfinished task, therefor, more resources are allocated to the brain.
It’s really interesting if you think about. There are very well known figures in our world today who swear by this type of mentality—the simple is better mentality.
Those like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates talk publicly about how they achieve so much success—by living minimally. I’m sure you’ve seen Mark wearing the same shirts over and over. Surely, he can afford more.
He does this because by freeing up his decision making, it gives him higher energy to better allocate mental resources to other tasks that are more important.
The same mechanics work with to-do lists. By thinking about the things you must do and writing them down, you save yourself from having to do the work twice. This gives you a better opportunity to focus more on the things which have an acute impact on your life.
What’s the takeaway?
At the end of the day, a to-do list will help you gain better focus to take care of your responsibilities and conquer your obstacles.
7. Tips on how to improve memory by pursuing a hobby
Have you ever played Monopoly or Chess? How about Sudoku? Those games really absorb you, mentally. Not to mention, they’re super addicting.
Human have actually been addicted to board games for at least 5000 years, evidence shows from ancient Egyptian burials. So, what is it about them that they’re so addicting?
For one, competition is always fun. But more so, it’s because you are exercising your brain in short, intense intervals. And like we discussed earlier, the more exercise your brain gets, the better you are able to focus.
In fact, a 20-year study of 3675 participants published on NCBI concluded that playing board games reduced the risk of dementia and cognitive decline by 15% than non-players (4).
The benefits of this type of concentration aren’t limited to just board games. They extend out to other mood-enhancing hobbies as well, such as:
- Playing an instrument
- Cooking
- Painting and artsy hobbies
- Gardening
- Video games (although different video games are known to affect different regions and functions within the brain)
Nonetheless, practicing your hobbies will always have a positive impact in your life, and it’s very important for your mental and spiritual health that you have at least one.
There is nothing more rewarding than learning how to better focus by pursuing a hobby long-term, to find yourself one day being a master at it. You won’t regret it.
What’s the takeaway?
If you’re wondering how to find focus to improve your mindset and concentration, try picking up a hobby. Practicing a hobby every day builds your perseverance, and it gives you a type of mental endurance that’s equivalent to studying for a difficult exam.
Conclusion
There are seven powerful ways you can learn how to focus better and improve your concentration. All it takes is persistence, the patience to perfect it, and perseverance to not quit until you achieve the results you’re looking for.
Make it one of your new years resolutions to have better focus this year. It could be focus at work, your relationships, family focus, or even—what’s the other word for focus that we talked about earlier? Future! Let your focus define not who you are, but who you want to be.
Here’s a quick recap of 7 Tips on how to better and improve your attention span:
- Exercise more often.
- Start to meditate.
- Memorize random things.
- Read whenever possible.
- Focus on fine details.
- Create a to-do-list.
- Pursue a hobby.
That’s all folks! Thanks for reading.
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