Focus - How Can I Improve It?

Focus is important. It helps us learn, keeps us aware, and allows us to improve. Becoming a better employee, a more proactive mother or father, a more attentive spouse and a reliable friend will all rely on our ability to focus. In fact, anything will. In the modern day, it seems like focus is in short supply. Not only are there many more distractions then there used to be, but it seems like society is slowly becoming used to accessing information in bite-sized chunks, and ignoring the humble art of spending long amounts of time on one circumstance.

But that doesn't mean focusing is a lost art. Our brains are plastic, not in material of course, but in terms of its ability do adapt. Scientists term this ‘neuroplasticity,’ and is a big factor in recovery from addictions, the ability for children to adapt to new circumstances rapidly, and the ability to improve your mental functioning over time. Like anything, you can train focus. It might be worth doing so in these ways:

Health

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Caring for your health is important when it comes to focusing. When dealing with personal issues that aren’t your fault, it pays to try to find methods of managing these symptoms. For example, it’s easy to see how treating tinnitus will be important for anyone trying to improve their focus while suffering from this affliction. Or else how could they focus without this external stimulus continually distracting them? It could be you are prone to deep headaches, or perhaps you don’t get enough sleep. Some matters of our health aren’t our fault, but must be maintained. Some are our fault, and can be corrected with better habitual action. One thing is for sure, learning to focus will not be possible unless you maintain a standard of personal care that helps mitigate and improve your daily comfort and ability to use your mind for the better in the first place.

Reading

When the previous, most important step has been taken care of, or is in the process of being taken care of, you may decide to embark on more comfortable and pleasant activities. Reading can serve as one of these if you respect its nature. Not everyone reads. Not everyone wants to become a full-time reader. But simply making more time for reading in your life can benefit you in ways hard to argue against. Your imagination will grow. Your vocabulary will increase. If you read good books, your ability to think abstractly should also become benefited.

Reading really helps with focus. Becoming absorbed in a page allows you to focus on an activity akin to active meditation. It might seem like pure escapism, but a good book will help you effortlessly flow through the pages and begin to train your time spent on one task - even if the book is challenging. It’s not hard to see how this can be a more beneficial task than watching television, movies or YouTube videos on your smartphone.

Put Down The Device

A word about smartphones. While they’re not bad or evil by themselves, some apps have been created with pure interaction in mind, fostering more of a neurotic approach, especially for young minds. For example, the ‘pull down to refresh’ feed feature most commonly found on apps like Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter has been designed with the same compulsiveness research used to entice gamblers to take one more pull of the slots. It taps into the same psychology, and it shows how repeated hits of offered dopamine or expectation that something is around the corner can make a mind more impulsive, and less interested in focusing on a single task for a long time.

It might help if you put down the device when you can, or only take it out when responding to notifications, leaving the browsing to dedicated times unless really needed. You might add time-locked parental filters on your child’s phone. You might just leave it in one spot of the room you aren’t going to access, ensuring its loud enough to enables your attendance when necessary. Either way, consider putting down the device. It could help you tremendously.

Meditate

Meditation is not a science, but an art. Taking care of it can work wonders in your daily life. Simply sitting down, observing your breath and letting the thoughts drift through your mind, perhaps ten to twenty minutes a day can train your concentration levels, which often makes for a clearer and more pleasurable mind. That’s right - focusing feels good if you know how to train it! This method coupled with all the previous on this list can have a big effect in the long term, and we hope you find those benefits for yourself.

With these tips, improving focus is sure to be a desirable and achievable personal outcome.

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