Improve your Concentration power

Concentration is taking your mind off many things and putting it on one thing at a time. Concentration requires a great amount of effort and time. Even if you practice it for one week or even a month, the result won't be productive if your brain isn’t performing well. Still, there are fairly easy ways to improve your concentration quickly and effectively. If you're having trouble with concentration this article may come in handy.

• Take rest. 

The biggest factor affecting concentration is rest and this has been approved by research. Concentration requires your mind to be calm. But your mind will be scattered if you are not well rested. Make sure that you get the right amount of sleep at the right time. Also have regular sleep time, and this can be the key step for concentrating.

Sleeping too much is also not ideal. Oversleeping disrupts your natural rhythm and can make you lazy. Avoid this by having an alarm clock to wake you up in time.

• Make a Plan. 

Always have a plan for whatever you are up to. When you sit down to work without a plan, you may easily get caught in activities like checking mails, Instant messaging (chatting) and browsing the web. Without a purpose, you are wasting your time. You’ll find yourself distracted by a variety of nagging thoughts instead of devoting all your attention to one important task.

To avoid this, make a clear plan that meets your needs beforehand. Take 5 or 10 minutes break in between, and use this time to check email, and then close your inbox and move on to your most important task. When making a plan be sure to allocate enough time for entertainment, studies and sleep.

• Meditate.

The practice of meditation will definitely improve our powers of concentration. Actually, when we try to meditate, it is concentration that is the first thing we need to master. A daily period of meditation gives us the chance to work specifically on concentration techniques.

• Exercise frequently.

 The ability to concentrate depends a lot upon our physical well-being. If we are tired, unhealthy and afflicted by numerous minor ailments, concentration will be more difficult. Of course, concentration is still possible, but it is just more difficult. However, we have to try to make life easy for ourselves; we need to give a high priority to our physical health:

·                                 Getting sufficient sleep

·                                 Staying physically fit

·                                 Maintaining healthy weight

·                                 Getting regular exercise

• Be aware of the spider technique.

 What happens when you hold a vibrating tuning fork next to a web with a spider in it? The spider comes to investigate where the noise is coming from because it pays to be curious. But what happens if you repeatedly hold a vibrating tuning fork next to the spider's lair? After a while, the spider won't stop to investigate the tuning fork anymore. It knows what to expect, so it ignores it.

The spider technique is behaving just like the spider. Expect for distractions to come and try to throw you off your concentration. A door slams. A bird whistles. A flash mob erupts. Whatever the distraction is, continue focusing on your task at hand. Be like the spider and turn a blind eye to distractions that you know can throw you off your concentration.

o                Focus on the task at hand: If talking with someone: ask questions; if reading a book or a report: ask yourself how you would summarize what you just read to a friend or to your boss.

o                In general, avoid and/or eliminate distractions. Tune out every­thing else. The harder the task, the more impor­tant it is to tune out dis­trac­tions.

o                Do not try to double-task, this will increase your errors and divide your attention. Attention is limited. When you try to do several things at once, you necessarily have to divide your attention and thus concentrate less on each individual tasks.