Last updated on May 11th, 2020 at 01:08 pm
Many of us suffer from lack of concentration for whatever reasons, and that can easily make us an under performer in the long run. Now, taking the today’s competitive environment into consideration, we certainly cannot afford to be unfocused in life. Whether you’re an adult or a kid, ability to concentrate and staying focus on tasks at hand is seriously important for all of us. So, if you find it hard to be able to concentrate on something and feel the need to improve concentration and focus, then here’s the post worth checking. And if you are wondering about how to improve concentration and boost focus then I have got you covered, because today I am sharing the 8 easy and scientifically proven ways to improve concentration easily and naturally. Whoever follows these concentration boosting tips carefully will be able to improve concentration fast and easily.
Success, for most of us, never comes easily. In fact, the definition of success is also very subjective. Some may feel successful only when he rises to the top rank while some may be happy earning a decent salary and not at all worried about reaching the top. No matter what it is, we cannot deny the fact that we are always under constant pressure to work hard and secure ourselves in life.
Be it peer pressure, be it family pressure, be it just the competitive environment around us, we have to constantly strive hard to succeed. Of course, some are a little lucky and tastes success early in life while others need to struggle more. But, amidst all of these, one thing is common for sure and that is we all need to be very focused in our life. This is especially true for our kids who got to make their future bring and beautiful.
Today, the world is very competitive. You can call it a rat race where each individual wants to put others behind and rise above in life. In fact, even if someone is not over ambitious and is satisfied with whatever little he/she has achieved in life, society will never allow him/her to stay at peace. The individual, in most cases will be under tremendous pressure and will be forced (both directly and indirectly) to work double hard to rise to the top. In fact, this pressure is not just on the adults, but most of us get a taste of it from childhood itself.
We are always told to study hard so that we can earn and grow in future. Well, in this constant race, those who have the determination and the guts to perform under pressure succeed while others fail. And, in major cases, one of the primary reasons behind failure is lack of focus and weaker concentration.
All of us need to do something and achieve something in life for our own good and for those who love us and care for us. Being successful will make you confident and keep you motivated. Failure, on the other hand, drives individuals into depression and the feeling itself is really bad. So, what you can do is to stay focused from the beginning and make your aim in life as per your own liking.
It’s absolutely not necessary that you have to be a good doctor or engineer to be successful, if you love singing, dancing, sports, etc., focus on that because it is easy to improve your concentration levels when it comes to doing something you absolutely love.
However, there are other means as well to improve your concentration. I have jotted down some of the most effective tips to improve concentration and focus below. I am hopeful that you are eager to know about them as lack of focus and concentration is a common problem these days. So, without wasting any more time, I will go straight to the tips to improve concentration and focus.
8 Amazing tips to improve concentration – backed by science
Proper focus and concentration can be the key to success in whatever you are working on. Be it study, business, job, invention, whatever you are doing, you need to concentrate to succeed. Along with proper concentration, you need the determination and a bit of luck to taste success.
But, somehow if your concentration fails and you are not able to focus, there is very little chance of success. Lack of concentration or poor concentration is a very are quite common among teenagers and children. Many of them are so fickle minded that they cannot focus on one work at a time.
In order to improve concentration in children, parents need to play an important role and they should help the child in improving their concentration and in staying focused. You need to influence them to remain positive and focused on whatever they are doing. But, for the grownups, it is best that you take the concentration issue seriously and work on ways to improve it.
Listed below are a few of the most effective ways that can help you to improve concentration and stay focused.
Get enough sleep
One of the simplest things to do to improve concentration is to get enough sleep and to sleep well. Maintain proper sleep pattern to get 7-8 hours of sleep on a regular basis. The main reason behind getting proper sleep is, like all other organs, your mind also needs some rest. When you are trying to concentrate on something, if you are sleep deprived, it is going make things worse for you. But if you have had a good sound sleep, your mind will be calm and you will be able to concentrate on your work much better.
Apart from making you calm, relaxed and be able to concentrate on whatever you are doing, proper sound sleep of 7-8 hours has many other health benefits. So make sure you are not sleep deprived and that you are getting good sleep every night.
In case you suffer from difficulties in falling asleep fast, try out the means that will help induce sleep. Here is a detailed post on how to get sound sleep like a bay that you may like to check.
Expose yourself to Greenery
Well, maybe a little bit of greenery and calming environment is all you need to increase your concentration levels. Studies have suggested the importance of the exposure to the natural environment including green spaces in reference to increasing concentration levels and making an individual more attentive.
In the study, it was seen that children aged 4-5 to 7 years having more green spaces around their homes scored much better in attentive tests. These findings actually show the importance of expanding green spaces in rural areas in order to support the health and the brain development of children.
However, the increase in concentration levels with respect to green exposure is not just limited to children only, but it’s equally effective for college students and adults. In one such study, the students were asked to do a mundane work and were given a 40 second break to view either a bare concrete roof or flowering meadow green roof in the midway. It was seen that those who viewed the greenery did less errors and showed excellent concentration skills in comparison to those who viewed the concrete roof.
As far as the workspace is concerned, in one study it was seen that enriching a bare office with plants increased the workers’ productivity by 15%. The presence of greenery around actually improved workspace satisfaction and increased concentration levels to a good extent.
All of us may not have the opportunity of having a rooftop garden or have an office that is full of greenery. But what you can do is to expose yourself to the green environment whenever you feel that you are unable to concentrate. Expose yourself to the environment and surrounding that’s greener and calmer to improve your concentration levels.
Get rid of distractions
Some individuals have high working memory capacity and do not face any problem to ignore all distractions and stay completely focused on their work. But, sadly, for the majority of us, tuning out all kinds of background distractions and staying focus often becomes a challenge. Hence, to enhance your ability to concentrate, it is best for you to get rid of all the distractions.
Here are a few of the most common distraction that you may like to avoid improve concentration and stay focused.
- Email– According to a research, if you control the number of times you log in to email (distraction) then it can actually help you improve concentration levels. In a study, it was seen that people who read emails throughout the day switched screens twice as often and also showed a continuing state of high alert along with constant heart rate. However, when emails were removed from them for about 5 days, the heart rate of those individuals returned to natural, variable one. What was concluded from this is if you take a break from emails, it will actually reduce your stress and improve your concentration levels.
- Cell phone notifications– A cell phone notification is one factor that can seriously affect your ability to concentrate. In fact, the distraction that occurs as a result of a cell phone notification is just as off-putting as using your mobile to send a text message or make a call as per scientific research. It was found that even though the cell phone notifications are short in duration, they trigger task-irrelevant thoughts or mind wandering that in turn, badly damage the performance of your task.
It was explained that the task performance is affected by cell phone notifications because the capacity of attention is limited in humans. And it gets split between tasks due to frequent cell phone notifications. In fact, if you are just aware that you have a missed call or a missed text, it can have the same kind of effect on you. Therefore, if you want to stay focused you need to switch off your mobile or put it on silent mode while performing something important which requires your full attention and concentration. Trust me; it is one of the simplest ways to improve your concentration.
- Social media– If you are using social media during your office hours or during times when you got to concentrate on something important; it is going to have negative consequences as far as your ability to concentrate is concerned. And, this is already proven by a scientific research.
Majority of us use social media and many also use it for personal reasons while at work. This is really bad. You got to fight your urge to use social media as much as possible if you are determined to improve your concentration levels.
Take work breaks
Apart from getting rid of all the distraction, you should also take work breaks as and when required as that will help you to improve your concentration, energy and keep you motivated and focused. Research has been done on it and it demonstrated to take the best kind of breaks for enhancing the concentration levels. Here’s what was recommended:
- A mid-morning break helps replenish your concentration levels.
- Make your breaks better by getting involved in something that you enjoy doing. Something which could make you recover fast and return to focused work.
- Short but frequent breaks facilitate recovery.
If you are able to take proper work breaks, trust me, you will experience less eyestrain, headaches and lower back pain. It will also improve your job satisfaction; facilitate better health and better revival of concentration, energy and motivation.
Brain training
Brain training methods, problem-solving exercises and even playing video games can actually help you boost your concentration levels. Like for example, studies have shown that those who often do word puzzles such as crosswords have improved brain functioning later in their life. Direct relationship was found between how often an individual used word puzzles and the accuracy and speed of performance in tasks assessing memory, reasoning and attention.
However, not all brain training are effective and so, the type of brain training you are doing needs to be considered in order to improve your memory and concentration. Like in one study, the researchers compared 2 brain-training methods named “dual n-back” and “complex span”. It was seen that those who participated in the dual n-back demonstrated about 30% improvement in the memory which is about double the gain made by the participants of the complex span. Dual n-back is actually a memory sequence test where individuals need to remember the sequence of auditory and visual stimuli that are continuously updated.
Playing video games have also shown to lead to changes in many portions of the brain. The usage of such games altered regions of the brain that are responsible for attention and visuospatial skills and made them function more efficiently.
Concentration enhancing foods
Did you notice that when you are hungry, you are unable to concentrate on anything? Well that’s true and so, you need to eat properly, on time, and include the concentration-enhancing foods in your diet.
Here are a few of the best concentration boosting foods worth eating:
- Chocolate– Chocolates especially coca bean is rich in flavonoids that are the compounds having neuroprotective effects. These cocoa flavonoids as per studies can actually help you to enhance your concentration levels, cognitive processing speed and working memory when consumed between 5 days and 3 months.
- Walnuts– Consuming walnuts can actually help you improve your test performances for cognitive function that includes the ones accessing concentration, memory and information processing speed.
- Avocados– You can actually improve your cognitive functioning even by consuming 1 avocado daily. This is due to the upsurge in the levels of lutein in the brain and the eye. Research has shown that daily consumption of avocado improved measures of cognitive skills including memory, attention and processing speed.
Do regular exercise
Regular exercise is a must for all of us, because it keeps you fit not just physically but also mentally. And you can easily improve concentration by exercising regularly. Scientific research has shown that individuals, who are into sports, are able to perform better in cognitive tasks in comparison to those with poor physical health. In this test, the group of individuals who led a sedentary life could not perform well in the tasks testing sustained attention.
Another study consisting of aged adults showed that exercises facilitated better brain functioning. The participants who did exercises for about 75 minutes and around 225 minutes weekly, showed better attention levels and an improved concentration. They were able to concentrate and focus on things much better than those who do not exercise.
Yoga is one such wonderful exercise that can easily improve your energy levels and brain functioning. It was found that when you practice Hatha yoga and mindfulness for about 25 minutes daily, it results in boosting of the portions of the brain that influences or are associated with goal-directed behavior and helps you focus much better.
Lose weight
Research has shown a connection between weight loss and better memory and concentration levels. This is probably because factors like sleep apnea, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, which are often caused due to obesity are said to impair the functioning of the brain. It is said that when the individuals go back to a normal weight range and all the associated health complications disappear, the cognitive issues also start to vanish.
However, it is not just to battle the problem of concentration, but controlling your weight is important in general. So, if you are overweight, do whatever it takes to lose weight and drinking detox water can be the easiest way to lose weight fast and naturally.
Over to you: how do you stay concentrated?
In order to be successful, you need to be able to concentrate and stay focused on whatever you are trying to achieve. But sadly, not all of us are so focused and suffer a lot from lack of concentration. I have seen may talented guys, but they lack concentration. Lack of concentration and focus can be the biggest hurdle in becoming successful in whatever you are doing.
At a time when you need to focus, if you are not able to do so, it may seriously affect your performance. In fact, being not so focused in life can actually be a serious reason for failure. So, concentration issues must be taken seriously and it must be dealt with.
Thankfully, there are many scientifically proven ways to improve concentration and I have already shared a few of them which includes
- Getting proper sleep of 7-8 hrs
- Exposing yourself to greenery and calmer environment
- Get rid of distractions like emails, cell phone notification, social media etc
- Take breaks in between your work
- Do brain training like solving cross word, and playing video games
- Eat foods that are known to boost concentration like chocolates, walnuts, avocados etc
- Do regular exercise
- Keep body weight under control
As you can see, all of these have already been proven by science to be effective and these are the easiest hacks that can be implemented by anyone who wish to improve concentration.
So, if you are struggling with lack of concentration and want to improve it naturally and easily then practice some of these tips and you will be able to improve your concentration magically
So, that’s all about how to improve concentration and I am sure you are going to practice these hacks to boost your concentration levels and focus. These hacks are equally effective for yourself and your kids, so encourage them to build these habits to be able to concentrate well and do wonders in their lives.
As always, don’t forget to share your hacks about how to improve concentration and focus and feel free to share this post.
Until the next post, stay happy, stay focused and keep shining.
