Ways to improve your concentration? What is a good strategy to stay focused? How do I focus and not get distracted? Why is the focus strategy the best? etc. Those are very common questions for us. So, we’re going to discuss some tips for maintaining or keeping your concentration. We all struggle to maintain focus in our daily lives and to maintain concentration once we have increased it. And these distractions keep our brain from focusing on 1 task. However, we speak about learning or about work and complex projects. Our day-to-day reality is that most people lack the ability to focus. The average person has the ability to concentrate with only 25% efficiency. This is why improving focusing skills is one of our favorite topics and targets for our students. Now a question, how can you train to induce that focused state in yourself?
The ability to focus the mind is one of the most important abilities one should possess. And this is why you are here, reading this article. Developing focus is not an easy task as it depends upon a number of factors starting with our own mindset and including the external environment. In order to be able to maintain focus, here are seven focusing strategies:
Mind mapping
It is a very powerful way to get more out of your head to organize information and maintain focus. This is a method that has evolved into one of the most effective learning and thinking tools. You can use mine mapping for communicating, presenting, meetings, planning, memorizing, learning, organizing, and negotiating. Transferring your thoughts onto paper is incredibly easy and simple to practice.
You don’t need more than 15 minutes to learn and understand mind mapping. Using mind maps allows you to see the bigger picture in detail and maintain your focus. How do you do it? Start off with your main image in the middle of your paper. For this main image make branches out of it that will be for a different area of your topic. Even make sub-branches out of them, only use one word per branch. If you keep using mind maps you are going to gain planning power creativity develop more of your brain and increase your powers of memory and observation.
Interest your mind
Try to find interest in learning and in projects to help you concentrate. Taking up a new hobby can be a tremendous help. You should also try to find something interesting even in a task that you would normally not like. If you are at the gathering, find someone and start a conversation. Be inquisitive and you might discover you have similar interests. Exercise, focus on finding five central important ideas to think about. Use mind maps to record the search when writing task questions to summarize your learning after each study session.
Find your purpose
Having a purpose to finish your work will keep you motivated and keep you focused. Part of the reason we lose focus is because we can’t see the point of whatever task we have to get done and would ever be doing something else. Once you find your purpose, write it down or repeat it to yourself to keep your energy in the right place. Your purpose can be the key that unlocks the door to your focus. Here are two exercises, first if you are studying remind yourself about what is important. It may not be important for you to ace one test, but it is important for you to succeed in achieving your career goals, whatever they may be. The next exercise is for keeping focus on work. If you are doing work remind yourself why your work is important and why the work you do really matters. If it really doesn’t matter to you but is a good means to an ad. Remind yourself of all the things you can buy because of the work or about all the fun things you can do once your working day is over.
Point out your internal distractions and stop them before they start
We all get distracted by different things throughout the day. Those thoughts might be about what you are eating for dinner. When do girls go shopping? Why didn’t the girl you like go out with you? etc. We can however limit those brain wanderings when you need to focus on a task by simply putting the brakes on the thought process. You can set up your environment to diminish distractions and decide on a routine or ritual that feels to you like a good way to begin your focus on work. As an exercise, identify what distracts you and then take proactive measures to not let them distract you again. For example, if it’s the Internet, television, or people, then you might want to consider studying at the library.
Increase the relevance of the task you need to complete
The idea here is simple. Our attention system is a top-down priority list and distractions are bottom-up. This is the key feature in any to-do list. The most important thing is at the top. The least important is at the bottom. In an article published in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers suggest that you can override your attention system to maintain focus, provided to have a good working memory, which is something you can train yourself. As an exercise choose one of your tasks for which you would like to increase the relevance, and assign a due date if it is at a site yet. Tap into the reward center of your brain and offer up a reward for completing a task. For instance, when I finish writing this article, I get a cookie to prioritize with a to-do list, organize everything, and focus only on the topmost goal. The goal is to add weight to the project you want to focus on. So that is easier to do so.
Manage your time
Managing your time goes hand in hand with making a to-do list, next to each item on the list. Write about how long it will take you to accomplish each task. Be realistic about this estimate. Then tried to complete each task within the confines of each time limit. As an exercise, after defining your to-do list, break up more time-consuming tasks with shorter, easier tasks. That way you won’t be overwhelmed by too many tough tasks in a row. You can think of the shorter tasks as a mini reward.
Actively engage your brain and maintain your focus by taking and using notes
It doesn’t matter how you capture the notes even if you never refer back to them again. Taking notes is extremely helpful. The act of taking notes helps your brain make what’s known as a special relationship between you and the information here and then maintains this relationship. As an exercise, 1st add to your notes. Supplemented the notes you took in class with extra material from the text and handouts. Always have plenty of extra space in your notes for this. Second, define terms heard in class. When you hear unfamiliar words, write them in your notes as best as you can, then look them up later on getting the correct spelling and definition in your notes and the last exercise. Summarize your notes at the end of each topic word chapter. When you understand what causes your brain to focus on something, it’s easier to train your brain to focus better and ignore distractions. The no one size fits all method works because everyone deals with or even though this is distractions differently. But once you are focused the last thing you want to do is let that feeling get away. Maintaining focus can help you accomplish almost anything. From starting a task to finishing your work an hour early, staying focused can help improve your professional life, help you listen to people better, and also help you come up with a solution to problems at a slower speed.
Here is the action step for you. Please access our discussions section and let us know if these tips have helped you maintain your focus. Better than that. If you were to choose free tips, what would you choose? Please share it with us. Thank you very much.