How Do I Develop Concentration Skills?

It will take time and patience for you to develop your concentration skills. Part of this development will come from a series of exercises. A larger, longer-term part will come from learning about yourself. You will need to learn how you work, what stops you from concentrating and how you can develop the optimal environment for when you need to concentrate.

Concentration skills aid people of all ages and backgrounds to do their work or studies more efficiently. Developing these skills in young children will aid them in the future just as much as a boss taking the time to develop his or her workers’ skills will improve the business. Different people think in different ways, have naturally different concentration levels and are distracted by different things, however. You must remember these differences and bear in mind that tricks and exercises might work for some people, but they do not work for everyone.

There are several concentration exercises, but some of the best rely on meditation and simple thought processes to focus on a certain top, sentence or idea. Train your mind by holding onto and concentrating on specific thoughts without daydreaming and without letting your mind wander. Teaching yourself concentration skills is also about teaching yourself to ignore distractions; it is important to learn what distracts you and try to remove it from your work or study environment. This can range from the beautiful view outside your window to social networking online or the soccer magazine staring up next to you begging to be read. Move the desk so it does not look out of the window, hide the soccer magazine and disconnect the Internet.

People can also be a large source of distraction. When people come into the room where you are working or studying, or if some commotion happens, teach yourself to ignore it. One good way to practice this is to go to a busy café. Order a drink and open a book to read. Concentrate on reading the book and do not look up at any other customers, do not listen in to conversations and so on to develop better focus skills.

Set goals to test your concentration skills and appropriate rewards. If you can ignore the whole café despite the waitress spilling hot coffee on a customer and someone with the worst wig in the world walking past you, for instance, then you deserve a slice of that cake you spotted on the way in. Make the aims progressively tougher as you meet current goals; this way, you are helping your concentration skills to slowly develop.

Build the perfect environment. This works best if you can remove all of the things that distract you. First, remove the clutter from your work or study environment, as clutter often gets in the way, contains distracting things like the soccer magazine or photographs that trigger daydreams. Find a comfortable seat, a good desk, a nice sofa or whatever works for you when studying or working. Also, learn to be comfortable with two things: first, shutting the door, and second, telling people you are trying to concentrate.