Improving Concentration (Ways That Work)

More often than not, when we are sitting in a classroom, we find that we have no clue about what was said after the first 10 minutes of a class. It may also happen that sitting in one place and studying proves to be easier said than done. Then will start the exercise of blaming the teacher or the place where we sit.

The problem in both the cases is not a boring teacher or an uncomfortable chair. It's the lack of concentration. The first prerequisite of learning is the ability to concentrate, which can be defined as the ability to be able to pay attention to one thing for extended periods of time. If you realise that you have a problem concentrating on something for long periods of time then there are ways that you can use to enhance your concentration. Building concentration is just like building stamina. The first day you cant run, the second day a little, the third a little more and so on till one day you realise you can run for miles without trouble.

Conscious improvement: This is the most basic approach to improving the concentration. It requires a conscious effort on from you to keep your mind on what you are studying. All you have to do is to consciously bring your attention back to studies the moment it starts wandering.

Extending targets: When you feel you have studied for a long time, just tell yourself, “let me do 2 more pages of this then I'll stop.” This way you keep yourself motivated and you wont get discouraged if you set bigger goals. Many a times concentration breaks because we are too busy thinking the we have 10 full pages to go before we reach the end. Here the daunting task of studying 10 pages seems big but if you tell yourself, “Let me do 2 more pages then I will stop” you see you have 8 pages left so you say, “well I've brought it down to 8 pages, might as well study two more,” and before you know it you are done with the 10 pages in one go. Here what helped you was that instead of thinking of 10 PAGES, you were thinking of only 2 pages.

Confusion and concentration: If you are confused or distracted then too you will be unable to concentrate. What you can do is to concentrate on one thing at a time. For example in the middle of your studies you realize that someone has a book that you wanted but it's already 10:30pm. Now you can either fret about not having that book and pace up and down the room or you can put that out of your mind and sit and study with what you do have. There may also be situations where you cant decide if a topic is important or not. Here again you have two choices. You can either be confused and waste time thinking about the importance of the topic or you can sit and study it.

Stop procrastination: What is procrastination? It is the practice of putting off, till tomorrow, what you can do today. This is one of the biggest time wasters around and is generally most active during TV time or while playing games. The only way to beat this is discipline. I know it sounds like someone trying to hand out unwanted wisdom but it is a fact. Only when you have the discipline to control yourself can you apply yourself to something. The best way to to avoid procrastination is to do things at the right time. Don't think that you'll do something else and then finish the work. Finish the work first and then do other things.

Tunnel vision: the 'out of sight out of mind' theory is what describes this tip perfectly. When you sit down to study and your cell phone is on the same table you will be tempted to pick it up and start messaging or make calls (unless you have no balance in the phone in which case you might start plying a game). Put the cell phone somewhere out of sight. Leave it on the bed, put it on silent mode and turn you back to it so that you don't see it and are not tempted to play with it. The same goes for anything thing else that may cause a distraction while you are concentrating.

Lack of concentration is one of the biggest problems that plague people from all walks of life. There is no pill or magic way to improve concentration. You have to put an effort into improving it and really apply yourself. Just the fact that you sat and read this entire article, in one go, means that you have improved your concentration a bit. You have won a battle in the war and constant practice will definitely make you perfect.