How to Improve Concentration
The ability to focus on a singular task, thought, or subject while excluding everything else from your field of awareness is a skill that few have mastered. And yet, concentration is one of the most important qualities to possess.
Unfortunately, in today’s ever-busy, ever distracting world, it’s harder than ever to concentrate on something and see it through to the end. Our attention usually just tends to wander without being able to zone in on a given subject for a reasonable amount of time. This is something that can be fixed, and like any other skill, the ability to focus and improve concentration can be developed.
Benefits of improved concentration
The importance of being able to concentrate and get things done faster cannot be overestimated as it can help you to improve your memory, improve your ability to study, work more efficiently, gain inner peace, get faster results, sharpen your intuition, and so much more.
Focused attention packs a ton of benefits and uses. It enables faster comprehension, assists in studying, improves memory, helps in focusing on a singular task, job, or goal, and it enables you to ignore irrelevant and meaningless thoughts.
A powerful tool in any walk of life, improved concentration can also assist you in getting things done faster and achieving goals more efficiently. Improved concentration plays an important role in meditation, gaining mental mastery, attaining peace of mind, and without it, the mind wanders restlessly from one thought to another.
Ways to improve concentration
Here are a few proven techniques to help improve concentration:
Avoid offputting sensory inputs
Loud noises, trying to do more than one thing at a time, and visual stimulation (such as from your smartphone) make concentration much more difficult, and being around such distractions or engaging in them more often, can put you into a habit of non-attention which is hard to break.
Identify what is distracting you and distance yourself from it - whether that involves putting your phone in a drawer or shutting the window to block our loud noises outside. Work out if music helps you focus or puts you off. For some people, music without words helps - try things out to see what works for you.
Take Short Breaks
Taking short breaks help in re-energizing and improving concern. Go outside, take deep breaths, or go on a brisk walk. You will be able to return to your tasks fully recharged and ready to focus more creatively.
Watch Your Breath while Meditating
Take 5 minutes out to meditate before work or even in a break during the day. An easy method is to simply focus on your breath. Do not try to control it in any way, just observe. When your mind wanders (which it will), bring it back.
This simple technique teaches you to focus on one thing at a time, thereby improving concentration. As you observe your breath, it will slow down, along with your mind, moving you into a dynamic, peaceful state of being.
Set objectives and avoid multi-tasking
Despite all the distractions out there, we must cultivate the ability to focus our attention on one thing at a time. The first step at inducing concentration is simply to decide on exactly what it is you want to focus on: set an objective and a time you want to complete it by. If your task is too large to do in a couple of hours, break it down and work your way through each part one by one.
Make it a point to put your full concentration on whatever you are doing and perhaps most importantly, avoid multi-tasking. While it might feel like we are being more productive when multi-tasking, the constant flicking between tasks and topics is less productive overall as it takes our brains a period of time to align with the task at hand and what needs to be done, effectively creating ‘downtime’ between tasks’. Instead ‘time-chunk’, and just focus on a single task or topic for a set period - try it, it works!
What works for you
Hopefully the techniques above help you achieve greater focus - we all want to do more actions in less time and by first focusing on our focus, we can take positive steps towards that goal. The best advice is to try different techniques and work out what works for you.