5 Tips for Improving Focus

It’s not possible to be awesome at focusing unless you practice focusing and push your limits, just like it’s not possible to be awesome at running unless you practice running and push your limits.

Here are five ways to practice focusing that have really helped me get my mind to stay in one place at a time:

1. Meditate. Start with short periods and then gradually extend the time you spend meditating. Setting aside three minutes every day for meditation and learning how to make that consistent can be a massive step in the right direction.

2. Stop checking your phone. When you get that urge to check, don’t. The more you respond to every distracting urge that pops up, the easier it becomes to be distracted. You’re training your brain to respond to urges automatically. That’s not going to help you.

3. Eat healthy. If your blood sugar is all over the place, your mind is all over the place.

4. Try uni-tasking. Try to be in your home, with no music or TV on, your computer and phone turned off, and then do something. Just do one thing. You could cook dinner and be present cooking dinner. Prepare the food and don’t think about anything else, not from the past or the future. Be mindfully present while doing one thing, once a day.

5. Eliminate all of your other compulsive behaviors. If you’re practicing reacting to urges and fears and uncertainties in many areas of your life, your brain is going to act that way in other areas of your life, whether you want it to or not. Eliminate compulsions one by one, starting with the easiest.