How to keep your mind focused?

We feel really frustrated when we want our mind to focus on one particular thing or idea but we find our thoughts are wandering too wide and far. A number of internal and external distractions are responsible for our mind’s deviation; these distractions cripple mental ability to focus on a particular issue. Good news is we can learn how to address these distractions and narrow down our mental focus while taking all other things off the mind.

Concentrate:

First we need to know what concentration means. Simply, concentration is taking our mind off many things and putting it on one thing. It is an ability to narrow down the focus of our mind directing all mental processes to work on a single task. 

Learn by looking at other people:

You can learn a lot from looking at other people how they concentrate. For example, if a good movie is on and audience are totally absorbed in it. What these audiences are doing? Their eyes are fixed over screen, their ears are very attentive to what being said and they breathing very slowly. It requires a major distraction to break their attention stream. These physical signs may help you to learn how to focus and improve your concentration abilities.

Avoid constant sensory input:

To concentrate, it is vital to avoid constant sensory input. Multitasking, loud noises and visual stimulation not only make concentration hard, doing so for some time develops a non-concentration habit that is really hard to break later.

Avoid outside noise:

Avoid outside distraction to take your concentration away. Try to be in a quiet place; equally important is to learn how to block out noise would help you stay focused.

Take breaks:

Taking breaks at appropriate intervals would help you to recharge your energy levels. Go outside, breathe deeply and take a brisk walk; it can enable you coming back to your task ready to focus more creatively.

Mediation:

Learning about concentration enhancement techniques, especially mediation would help you to learn how to avoid distractions and stay calmed and focused.

Prioritize your task:

One possible reason your failure to concentre on a particular issue lies in you lack an ability to prioritize your tasks. You are too occupied with different things, assignments and tasks and your mind grapples to get hold of all these things at a time. This results in a short focus where you concentrate on one issue for a while then your thoughts rush to some other assignment. With prioritizing tasks, assignments or whatever you do, you provide your mind with a clear structure that in turns directs our limited mental processing capacity and enables focusing on a particular task.

Take proper sleep:

The fact that sleep is good for brain is undisputed. The brain, according to a latest research, performs a clean up operation during sleep. It implies that lack of sleep left toxic material in our brain cells that can play havoc by crippling our ability to think and focus; no matter what amount of caffeine we take to fix it.

Harvard Medial School’s Division of Sleep Medicine showed in a study that any productivity gains from abandoning sleep to work are outweighed by detrimental effects of sleep deprivation on mood, ability to focus, and access to higher-level brain functions for days to come.