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Concentration is the act of fixing your cognitive resources on an object for a certain amount of time. This orientation of your psychological processes can be conscious or unconscious.
When concentrating, you may have to make an effort to ignore certain distractions. On the other hand, this might not be necessary if the subject you’re concentrating on is so interesting that any distractions simply can’t compete for your attention.
In this article, we’ll talk about instances in which you consciously want to maintain concentration, and in which there may be significant distractions that pose a threat to it.
How to improve your concentration
If you perform exercises for concentration and memory, you’ll be able to make better use of your time. After all, you live in a world where you’re almost always surrounded by potential distractions.
In order to strengthen your attention against these distractions, here are some exercises.
1. Meditate
When you meditate, your feelings of stress are reduced, your memory improves, and your ability to concentrate increases. However, to achieve the desired results, you must meditate on a daily basis. If you don’t do it often enough you won’t achieve your objective of increasing your concentration.
When you want to meditate, it’s best to prepare a comfortable and quiet space and sit down and relax, breathing deeply. You can play relaxing music or light a candle. The goal is to try to remain completely relaxed and pay attention only to your breathing for at least ten to 15 minutes.
2. Break your routine
A good routine is essential to cope successfully with everyday life. For example, having your academic or work day planned. Therefore, before going to bed or while having breakfast, make a list of your tasks for the day.
In your planning, make sure you include breaks and free time so that your mind has time to recover. In fact, knowing how to manage your time allows you to both gain concentration and be more productive.
3. Exercise
Walking is one of the healthiest exercises for the body. Memorizing places, where you are, where you’re going, or how you’re going to get there helps strengthen your concentration and your memory.
Also, as you walk, carry out the following exercise. Count your steps in different sequences: five, ten, ten by ten, hundred by hundred, etc By doing this, you’ll be able to pay more attention to your walking and you’ll be exercising your concentration and memory at the same time.
4. Visualization
Look closely for one to two minutes at an object, first a simple one, then a more elaborate one. After focusing your attention on it, close your eyes and create a mental image in your mind.
The objective of this exercise is to try and visualize the object in detail in order to recreate it. By doing this, you’re able to check your concentration and memory capacity and see how it’s improving.
5. Puzzles
Doing jigsaws or puzzles helps you exercise your memory and improve your concentration. They make you think logically, reflect, and enhance your reasoning and manual and mental skills.
You can buy a real jigsaw. However, if you don’t want to spend too much money or don’t have much time, you can do some virtual challenges of a similar nature.
6. Hobbies (word searches, crossword puzzles, or sudoku puzzles)
As well as being entertaining, mental games enhance your memory and attention and improve your concentration. In fact, research proves they have the power to cushion or slow down the cognitive decline associated with age.
Ideas to improve concentration
To finish, here are some tips for you to try, along with the concentration exercises:
- Don’t carry out too many tasks at the same time. If you do, your brain and mental capacity will become saturated.
- Adopt good sleep hygiene and ensure you get adequate rest at night.
- Times of leisure, relaxation, and rest in between work, university, or day-to-day tasks help both your brain and your mood.
- Disconnect for a while from your cell phone and social media, etc.
- Several nutritionists recommend eating a healthy diet with foods that improve memory and concentration. These include cocoa beans, dates, walnuts, oats, seeds, lentils, avocado, banana, blueberries, etc.
- Writing with paper and pen is preferable to on the computer. That’s because it requires more concentration and memorization.
- Board games are one of the best concentration exercises.
- Learning to play chess or dominoes would be excellent therapy as these kinds of games require more concentration.
As a rule, when you train your mind, you feel more relaxed and also gain in productivity. Indeed, concentration is necessary for your daily life, especially if you have to work or study at home, with all its possible distractions. Therefore, if you’re finding it difficult to concentrate, it’s essential that you put into practice some of the ideas that we’ve given here.
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