Your ability to concentrate on studies, or anything for that matter, depends on how invested (engrossed) you are in the subject. Have you ever had an inclination toward a particular subject? It could be that you feel the subject could enable and empower your creativity in some way, help you craft things. On the other hand, you may have subjects that don’t spark a speck of interest in you, but you have to mug it up for the papers. Regardless of your situation, there’s a way to build concentration toward any subject. Let’s dive in!
Here are some tips to hack into your brain and make it love learning.
Disengage from social media & remove distractions
Social media is the biggest road block in any concentration endeavour. It literally teaches us how to break our own concentration. As we engage more with it, it robs us off even of the concentration we need to get through work or school.
We keep our phones near us while we’re working. The phone, whether you’re looking at it or not, is looking back at you. And you see unarticulated-subtle thoughts arise, tempting you to check “something” on the phone, and 5 minutes later you’re mindlessly scrolling through short form content.
Get rid of ALL (YES ALL) distractions. Enclose yourself in a tight study space if that does the job. The goal should be to remove all distractions and options from your environment before you start studying. When you do this, your subconscious mind will stay focused, and your energies will become more invested in what you’re actually doing. Our space greatly affects our energies. When you’re in a library, you feel one way; When you’re in your room, you feel another way.
You need to fixate the rooms for you to get your head in the right space. For example, don’t eat where your study, don’t sleep where you eat, don’t play where you meditate, and so on.
I’d recommend getting an environment where you have full control over your environment.
Only keep things you need for studying
If you study from a book, don’t keep your phone, laptop, or even unrelated books near you. The lesser things you keep in your environment, the better. If you are going to study for long hours, just keep a water bottle near you.
Do prefer sitting on an empty stomach, not a hungry stomach! We’ll cover what’s good for a student to eat in the next sections.
Relaxation improves your ability to concentrate
Have you noticed, when you’re tired, you’re able to concentrate on studies much better? This happens because when your body is exhausted, you’re also relaxed. Relaxation plays such a great factor in the process of concentration, I can’t emphasize this enough. If you want to develop a studying routine after you come from college or classes. Make sure that you are relaxed. You can take the following steps to relax your body and mind.
- Take a hot water bath.
- Yoga is magical. With the right form of yoga, you can immediately go under deep sleep for 20-30 minutes and wake up feeling like you’ve just been borned.
- Eat refreshing food [Not too much]. Berries and low carbohydrate fruits are good. High carbs make your system sluggish.
- Take coffee or tea if you want [If you feel sleepy]. Coffee agitates the mind and prevents it from relaxing, so keep your consumption moderate.
Our main goal is to be restful and stress-free. If you feel sleepy after a hot bath, either take a 20-minute nap or have some caffeine beverage. Lack of sleep equals to lack of focus. When you’re sleepy, your brain will be unable to focus and process information.
On a second thought, if you’re planning to pull an all-nighter for the upcoming exams. Well! Let this night be your last focus night. Night is for sleep, early morning is for studying. You’re anyway going to sleep at least 5 hours. Manage your studying schedule and take your own deadlines seriously!
You’re better able to concentrate at certain times of the day, like 4:00 early morning, 6:20 evening. These times are called brahma-mahurat, the times when there’s no noise in the space.
Tips to calm the mind
A tired and uncalm mind wanders off everywhere. Concentration is the key to studying smart. The more concentration you develop, the stronger and spongy your mind gets. To develop unnatural levels of concentration and perceptivity, you should practice the following technique every day for 20 to 40 minutes in your free time if possible!
Develop A habit.
Once you begin to study regularly, and not take breaks initially (for, let’s say, 30-40 days of studying), you’ll start to develop a studying habit. Once you do that, studying will become effortless. You won’t even have to think about scheduling your day, you’ll instinctually get to it on a specific time.
A big trap that most fall into is, they’d create an insurmountable study habit right off the bat, and they’ll begin to study all the time. Practically, it’s important to understand your current schedule, and change it slowly.
How to develop higher levels of concentration?
Apart from studying and working, build a habit to concentrate at certain times of day. Create a sacred place, posture, and time, where you practice concentration every single day, without missing. Following are some concentration techniques that you can practice.
#1 Breathing technique
- Sit in a relaxed posture. [Not in a posture that’ll make you feel sleepy]
- Close your eyes.
- Take deep breaths for a minute. As you do, visualize breathing out all the clutter of the mind (If possible, try visualizing your life being push out through your nostril. Become the wind!).
- After a minute, watch your breath flow in and out. Move your awareness with the breath as it moves in and out.
You can do this exercise for, minimum 20 minutes a day. This watching of breath builds discipline and control over the mind. Whether you have ADHD or other neurological issue diagnosed by a doctor, Yoga is the way out of it, and breathing techniques is one of the 8 limbs of yoga.
Relaxation is the key to dissolving your inner walls and exploring who you truly are. Mental and physical health are just the side benefits.
If you practice watching the breath throughout the day. Bring attention to your breath whenever you remember, and slowly your mind will begin to become more and more silent. And your brain will naturally begin to display greater competence.
#2 Technique to concentrate
Follow the meditation practice mentioned below, step by step, and unleash the genius within.
Take deep breaths for a minute and calm the mind. close your eyes Visualize a halt. Imagine a small white point of light at the center of your forehead.
Watch that light as you breathe. Slowly but surely, you will notice that light becomes more and more still. You’ll feel like you are going into a complete halt. This state of halt is called concentration.
Swami Vivekananda practiced this type of meditation. We already know how intelligent he was. I’d really recommend reading more about him.
Eating The Right Food For Concentration.
You can’t concentrate on your studies when you are feeling groggy and sleepy throughout the day. We eat the wrong foods and believe that what we’re eating is totally exclusive to our ability to concentrate. Bad food, whether eaten through the mouth, eyes, ears, nose, and thoughts creates disorders and all unneeded ailments like ADHD and neurosis. The doctor will help you manage your ailment with medications, yoga will help you treat it. Our bodies have incredible healing capability. There are two causes of feeling sleepy in the afternoon.
Boredom, too much food or wrong food
Boredom is caused when we have built a habit of overstimulating our brains. Whether you have exams or no exams, you must learn to discipline your body (which includes the mind). Boredom can only be fixed by boredom itself. If something bores you, do something more boring, and your brain will start loving the less boring thing the next day.
The right food
What foods to eat to have a clear mind and sustained energy throughout the day?
This is an important aspect of studying. Eating tooo much snack will make you feel sleepy and eating too little will make you feel hungry (if you don’t practice intermittent fasting).
You can eat anything you want, besides these:
Do Nots Sugary foods [Creates a sugar rush for 5-15 minutes, then makes you feel groggy] Too much caffeine [Too much caffeine causes the opposite effect and also makes you feel anxious] Processed carbs [Only eat in moderation, because they don’t provide constant energy] Low protein meals. Dos Protein rich food Healthy fats (Nuts and avocadoes) Winter melon juice. Green vegetables Plenty of water
Benefits of having a study group
Surrounding yourself with people who have similar goals helps a lot. It is underrated to the point that people don’t consider taking this advice seriously and dismiss it right away.
Upon surrounding yourself with the right people, you’ll realize that you’re able to make up for your weaknesses and flaws.
Did you know? Studies shows that your IQ and bank balance is the average of the 5 closest friends you surround yourself with?
You have to choose whom to surround yourself with for studies. A negative personality will sabotage your academic performance. On the other hand, a positive and enthusiastic student will improve your grades even if you are not a top performer. This happens. Whether or not you’re aware, you’re absorbing tips and insights from the people around you 24×7.
Following are the traits that you are looking for:
Enthusiasm towards academic topics. Positive mental attitude toward exams. Highly focused person. Someone who is moderately social. Someone who values grades just as much as their competence. Who has set the right habits in their life Scores high in the classroom. Someone who sets their schedule, meet their deadlines, seek accommodation for what they lack.
Remember you’re not looking for extremely hardworking students who score average. Not that you should become toxic towards them, just that you must surround yourself with people who you want to be like, as much as possible.
How to study without distractions at home?
This might depend on the situation you are in. For me, I have two dogs, have to walk them many times, cook food for myself, clean my home, there are too many things to do.
When these things are so spread out throughout the day, it is hard to study for hours on end. Whatever your excuses or problems at home are, you’ve got to manage your time.
To manage your time, you can schedule your day on weekends. Pick a day and prepare for the week in advance. You can also look up foods on the internet, that can be prepared in batches and eaten throughout the day.
If you live at home, or a place where you don’t have to worry about anything and just study. You can follow these steps to avoid distractions.
Pick a desk that is only meant for studying. Never do anything else there. Prepare well before a studying session. Keep water and light snacks nearby. Decide when to take a break clearly. For example, if you follow pomodoro techniques, set a timer but don’t look at it every 5 minutes. You can do this by keep the clock outside your FOV.
How to concentrate on studies without sleeping?
It all boils down to the kind of food you eat and also on your interest in the subject. Of course, you’ll feel sleepy if you are not interested by the subject. Boredom always induces sleep. To overcome this limitation, you have to spend time with people and students, who are actually interested in the subject.
Forming a mastermind group will change this psychological behavior really quickly. If you study for an exam with a friend who is certainly going to score good, you too will score good!
Don’t eat too much sugar and processed carbs before studying. You can have them when you don’t have to study for long hours.
Exam Pressure?
Some Students, a day before their exams, instead of studying, watch and read about how to study. I remember that I used to do it. Of course, if the syllabus is huge, it won’t be possible to study everything in one day. Clearing an exam shouldn’t be your goal, whether you’re in a University or school. Your focus shouldn’t be on which page of the book you’ve reached. Focus on this page and ask yourself, what I can do now?
Stress and panic is the main cause of not being able to study. Just let go and start studying what you feel is important.
Forget about the exam.
Just imagine that you are on a holiday and you’ve got to study for studying’s sake. This will calm your mind and help you concentrate minutes before the exam. If you have an exam tomorrow, make sure that you stay calm [This’ll increase your chances of success] and use the tips I gave earlier about meditation techniques.
You can also use the 2 techniques mentioned above to release stress and exam anxiety.
Conclusion: Most Importantly Find Your Why?
Know why you are studying or want to study. What do you want from it?
Do you do it solely for good grades? Parental pressure? Freedom? Riches? or Fame?
Or maybe you want to get it all done in time. Whatever the reason is, come to a conclusion! No reason is smaller than the other. If you know your “why”, visualize the end result. Watch yourself score better marks and achieve the things you want, in your mind.
And as you do, your mind will begin to develop cohesive neural connections around that visualization. You’ll start to develop neural connections that take you towards what you visualize. This is called “Autosuggestion or self-hypnosis“. The practice takes minute to apply, and can decides how your entire year would go!
So, these were the tips to help you stay focused! Plan on developing the right habits and actually incorporate the tips I’ve mentioned above, in your studies. You’ll surely begin to see results.
That’s it for this one! Make sure you comment below what you feel and add more tips if I’ve missed something!
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