Have you ever found it hard to focus when doing something? Feeling easily distracted or unable to concentrate doesn’t just delay your work, but can also be dangerous, especially if you’re doing important activities like driving, operating heavy machines, or even studying.
This lack of focus shouldn’t be taken lightly. There are many ways to improve focus that have been proven to help you get back on track and finish tasks more efficiently.
Here are some tips to help you focus better, especially when studying.
12 Ways to Improve Study Concentration for Hours
If you want to improve your concentration while studying, here are some things you can do:
1. Remove Distractions
Besides people, many other things can distract you from studying, like gadgets. Notifications on your gadget release dopamine in your body and make you happy, so you want to keep checking your gadget. Slowly, your attention shifts away from studying. So by removing distractions, you’ll find it easier to concentrate.
2. Avoid Multitasking
The next way to focus better is to do one thing at a time. Doing many tasks at once can make you feel overwhelmed and lose direction. Focus on one task, and take a break before moving to another task.
3. Train Your Brain with Mental Games
To improve concentration, you can try brain-challenging games like sudoku, crossword puzzles, or chess. These activities help sharpen your memory and become a way to focus better in the long run.
4. Try Different Study Places
Changing your study location can give you a fresh atmosphere and motivate you to study. When we keep studying in the same place, like in our bedroom, we might start feeling bored and uninspired.
By changing study locations, we experience different atmospheres that can stimulate our brain to produce new ideas. It also helps overcome the boredom we feel when studying.
For example, if you usually study at home, try studying in a park, library, or cafe. This change can help break your routine so you can study more productively. But it’s important to choose a comfortable study place – try to find somewhere that’s not too crowded or noisy so you can concentrate.
5. Always Bring Water, Snacks, and Candy
When studying for long periods, we often feel sleepy or tired. This can reduce our focus while studying.
My usual solution is to take a short break to drink water and eat snacks or candy.
Taking a short break for water and snacks can help boost energy, improve focus when returning to study, and prevent dehydration. Therefore, I highly recommend bringing water, healthy snacks, and candy in appropriate amounts.
6. Try to Find Interesting Learning Resources
Boring material can make your brain tired quickly. Choose fun and interactive learning resources. For example, EZClass offers English courses that are presented in an enjoyable way, which helps you stay focused longer.
7. Set Study Time Limits
Well, studying has limits too. Don’t think that just because you’re ambitious and want perfect exam scores, you should study non-stop. In the end, instead of getting good grades, you might get sick and miss the exam because you’re too tired from studying. Oh no!
You need to set limits on your study time. Not too long, but not too short either. For example, you could study for 2 hours. During those 2 hours, you don’t have to focus continuously. You can take one or two breaks of about 5-10 minutes.
Remember! Don’t take too long. This is just to stretch your body and rest your eyes. With these break times, your mind can relax and refocus.
8. Get Enough Sleep and Don’t Stay Up Late Often
You’re probably familiar with staying up late to do assignments or just watch movies. But you should start reducing this habit, because staying up late often will harm your health in the future and affect your study quality. It makes you feel sleepy the next day and hard to focus when studying.
My usual solution to avoid staying up late is to do assignments earlier in the morning or afternoon, so at night we can sleep earlier. When there are classes the next day or we want to study, we’ll still feel fresh and can focus better.
9. Create a Study Ritual
To improve your study concentration, you can create a ritual before starting to study. For example, cleaning your desk, stretching, eating certain snacks, spraying your favorite room freshener, and so on. By doing rituals like this, your brain will find it easier to focus when studying.
10. Make a List of Study Goals
This can include goals you want to achieve while studying. For example, today you’re studying Biology. You can set a goal that today you must understand the Biology material in Chapter 1. Usually, having these goals helps you concentrate better while studying. Make sure the goals you set match your learning capacity. Don’t push yourself too hard.
11. Eat Healthy Food
Did you know that the food you eat affects your ability to focus? To improve concentration, try eating more healthy foods like fatty fish (salmon), eggs, spinach, and blueberries.
Also, keeping your body hydrated by drinking enough water can help you stay focused. It’s best to avoid processed foods, sugary foods, and foods that are very oily or fatty.