How to improve our focus and concentration? The answer is ‘practice’. Practice exercises to improve your focus on a daily basis. Concentration is basically concerned with disciplining your mind to improve your focus. However, your mind will tend to resist your efforts, as it loves its own freedom. By practicing 10 to 15 minutes of exercises to improve focus on a daily basis, you will be able to train and discipline your mind, and hence improve your concentration. By practicing mental exercises, you train your mind to master it and put it into its proper place, as your servant, and not as your boss and master. Here are 10 concentration exercises to try that will improve your focus if done regularly each day for 10 to 15 minutes.
01. Practice simple mental calculations
For your first lesson, you might begin with something very simple, the addition table in your mind, starting with 1 plus 1 equals 2, and continuing through each number up to 1 plus 9 equals 10, then continue with 2 plus 1 equals 3, and so on, until 9 plus 9 equals 18. Keep your attention closely focused on the mental task, and notice the command over the neurological process of concentration.
02. Observe
Get any physical object, a fruit, a small piece of furniture, or a toy, and examine it closely and carefully. Take note of its characteristics and features, while keeping your mind from staying away and starting to entertain your thoughts. Keep your complete attention on one thing you currently have in your hands. Take note of its color, shape, texture, and even smell.
03. Focus on a single word
Find a nice quiet spot, where you can stay for at least 5 minutes without anyone interrupting you. This exercise requires you to laser point your thoughts on a single target, a single word of your choice. It doesn’t matter what word you choose as long as it is inspiring. Love, courage, happiness, and success are good examples. Repeat the word mentally in your mind for 5 minutes. When you feel your concentration is improving, you can increase the duration to 10 minutes.
04. Observe without thinking
This exercise is similar to the previous one, but this time you will observe any chosen object, fruit, furniture, etc. without any mental verbalization. That is, make the act of observing completely blank as much as possible. Basically, for 5 minutes or so, you should look at your chosen object from all sides and angles without thinking anything about it.
05. Observe and conjure
Visit the logical next step to the previous two exercises. This time, after observing your chosen object for a few minutes, close your eyes and mentally picture the object as you have seen it. Visualize it by examining the object mentally. Turn it around in your mind and take notes of its features and physical characteristics while shutting out any irrelevant thoughts.
06. Focusing on sounds
In our day-to-day lives, we keep hearing several sounds. Try to focus on a specific sound, such as a voice, then deliberately switch over to another sound, such as that of a bird.
Again, switch over to another sound, say the sound of traffic. Continue to switch between sounds after focusing on one sound for one minute. This exercise can also be done visually by focusing on the person or thing that is creating the sound and focusing then on another. Ensure that while focusing on one particular sound, you do not think of or hear anything else.
07. Hold a single thought
Hold a single thought for an absolute minimum of 5 minutes, then increase to 10 in the next days, and so on until you arrive at one hour of continuous focus. Don’t cheat yourself. If an irrelevant thought comes into your mind, your concentration has been broken. Once you take the step to increase your concentration, you become more engaged in the activities and you have the energy you need to deal with all these challenges. You can increase your thinking process several times, and that is because your attention is going to become very sharp and you will easily be able to connect to the tasks at hand.
Now, I’ve presented you with 7 exercises that will improve your focus if done regularly each day for 10 to 15 minutes. Some of these exercises are hard, some of them are easy, but I can assure you that they work.
My advice for you is to re-read this article at least twice because it’s important, and as a second step, choose 2 to 3 exercises and do them for 30 days, 10 to 15 minutes per day. Please share with us which of these 8 exercises you chose to do. Thank you very much.