How to Improve Your Concentration: 9 Smart Tips

How often have you found yourself staring at the ceiling or out of the window, fidgeting with your fingers or paraphernalia, paying heed to everything but the task at hand? This is more likely to happen when a person finds his or her daily schedule mundane or bothersome. Almost at all times, the person is bogged down with a multitude of thoughts from various everyday events, which reduces one's focus to that of a goldfish. He or she is unable to put in undivided concentration and as such it hampers one's performance, and evokes negative emotions like unhappiness and dissatisfaction. This is when you need to work towards improving your concentration rather than ignoring it.

As per modern psychologists, the mind cannot remain fixated on a solitary object for a considerable period of time. You might have come across the term "concentration span". It refers to the duration of time one is capable of devoting to a specific chore before his mind wanders off to something else.An improved concentration span means reduced errors and more productive outcomes. As a result, even the mind becomes less restless and one's self-confidence increases.Here are some smart tips to help you improve your concentration -

1. Practice Makes Perfect
   If you are good at a particular task, do it till you become exceptionally good. If you lag behind in another, do it more often by setting certain targets for learning. Consequently, even slight success can build up your confidence and interest, thereby indirectly doing wonders to your concentration levels.

2. Yoga Helps
   Yoga helps in calming the mind, doing away with anxiety and rage. Further, it relieves migraines or slight headaches and brings down blood pressure. The exhalation involved resembles the typical humming sound of a bee, which explains the alternate connotation "Bee Breath".

Steps to be followed for this particular de-stressing exercise are: A. Sit and close your eyes in a properly ventilated and quite setting. Place your index fingers on your ears, right at the cartilage.B. Breathe in and while breathing out, press the cartilage with the fingers.C. Keep the cartilage pressed while making a loud humming sound like a bee.D. Breathe in again and out. Repeat the pattern for about 6-7 times.
yoga

1. Visual Stimulation
   Researchers at the University of Melbourne say that simply looking at nature (meadows or a garden) for instance, from the window next to your work desk for 40 seconds or so, can boost concentration power tremendously. It can even be in the form a picture or a visual screen. During the study, published in the Journal of Environment Psychology, the researchers found that students, who glanced at nature-based images in the middle of a tedious task, did substantially better than the ones who didn't. This happens due to sustained attention accelerated by micro-break viewing.

2. Food for Thought
   Food items like blueberries, green tea, avocados, leafy green vegetables, fatty fish, water, dark chocolate, flax seeds and nuts might be said to boost your ability to focus. A wholesome breakfast is necessary to provide the energy and consequent focus throughout the day. Being the first meal of the day, it sets way for all the mental as well as physical activities. The value of a well balanced breakfast, rich in all vital nutrients like carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, minerals and fats, can thus not be undermined in case one is aiming at improved concentration.

3. The Importance of Relaxing and Keeping Calm
   Where tension exists, whether physically or mentally, there is a separate commitment of energy, like the stray strand of thread that refuses to enter the eye of the needle. Meditation is not an escape from reality but rather an enabling unit to face and overcome the challenges head-on. It further ensures inner clarity. It is this very effort to avoid thinking of more than one thing at a time accounts for higher concentration levels. Calming your nerves plays a key role. Deep breathing and meditation, followed by a determined mindset helps to concentrate better. It is to be coupled with auto-suggestion, which is a motivation of sorts to oneself - "I can do it!" "Good job" "Focus buddy, focus!" Even an environment well-suited to your needs is a determinant factor for success in concentrating. The surroundings need to be still and void of distractions like cell phones.

1. Penning Down
   Penning down all that needs to be done and accordingly chalking out a schedule is imperative. But mere paper work won't do, one needs to adhere by the time allocated to each task. This kind of regularizing automatically trains the mind after a few days. "Foreknowledge of the time table results in rigorous training of the mind, which in turn improves concentration.

1. Habituate Yourself
   Once you become familiar with your goals (mainly short term), it is easier to concentrate. A focused mindset with willpower is the stepping stone for success. It works on the principles of Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov's classical conditioning theory. So when you condition your mind, it functions better in that manner.

1. Emotional Detox
   Concentration is a process that helps sustaining attention to a task. Concentration works depending on how appealing the task is. To make it interesting, the effects of the task should be relevant as well. Parallel attention to other issues could be distracting. However, such intrusive parallel issues are decided by their emotional influence.

2. Keep the Body Fit
   Swimming, skipping and even playing with others (basketball, volley ball etc) are effective ways to improve your concentration.

So put away that coffee mug hoping for concentration boost and get going with these simple brain tricks.