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“Interest. Here is the key to the whole thing. If and when you are truly interested in what you are doing, or are about to do, then you will centre your attention on it with little or no effort, and almost irrespective of the attendant conditions.” —Ralph Alfred Habas in The Art of Self-Control
ZARA is the perfect example of a person lacking concentration and focus. She is always lost in her thoughts and imagination. Her mind wonders too much and she dislikes focusing on things that she does not like doing. No wonder she forgets doing many important things and chores.
She also loses interest in virtually everything she does after some time. She follows her heart and hates to discipline her mind in order to focus and concentrate on anything.
The dictionary defines concentration as “exclusive, sustained attention to an object OR close mental application that is carried out without any form of distraction or hindrance.” ‘Focus’ and ‘attention’ are the alternative words used for concentration.
In our daily life, concentration is important in every task. It ensures attention to detail, helps us avoid careless mistakes, increases productivity and work rate, improves our image in front of our fellow workers or acquaintances, etc. The ability to focus and concentrate makes a person more responsible. Scientific research also indicates that peak performance and excellence in anything we do depends on the ability of being totally absorbed and focused on that thing.
An analogy in this regard would be the rays of the sun passing through a lens. When the dispersed rays are focused on a single point, they have the power to burn the object. Similarly, when calling out to a person far away from you, you can make a funnel with your hands for your voice to be louder. The funnel, when placed on your mouth, helps direct and focus sound waves toward that person and make your voice easily reach that person. Similarly if you focus all your mental energies towards a single task at any time, the result will greatly improve.
One of the most common issues faced by students is difficulty in concentrating on the studies and academics. For them, the best way to improve concentration is to take a genuine interest or liking of the academic subject that they are studying. Whether it is sciences or arts, whenever you are studying a certain concept, try relating it to real life or analysing it in as much detail as you can. Don’t be afraid to ask your teachers and others as many questions as you want about the concepts you are studying. By taking an active interest in anything you do, you will always succeed in improving your concentration.
Concentration is also important in extra-curricular activities and sports. Frequently, when one takes things easy or becomes over-excited, then one tends to lose focus. This may prove very costly in certain activities like playing cricket or chess. A certain victory in chess or cricket can easily turn into defeat with lapse of concentration. Similarly, success can turn into failure in any important task due to some blunder resulting from lack of concentration.
The story of the hare and the tortoise engaged in a race also serves to highlight this point. The hare took things too easy, lost focus and slept during the course of the race. The tortoise never lost its concentration and kept on going while fighting all the odds and self-defeating thoughts. The tortoise’s focus helped it win the race while the lack of concentration of the hare made it lose the race.
Another important thing to remember in improving your concentration is to free your mind from unnecessary thoughts. During a day, thousands of thoughts cross our mind. Some are important and some are not. By focusing on what is important in our lives and thinking and acting accordingly, we can eliminate thinking about and doing unnecessary or unimportant things. The need to relax is also an associated aspect here. By getting rid of unnecessary, worrying thoughts and thereby getting in a relaxed frame of mind, you will be able to focus much better.
Moreover, this would also help you improve your memory. Our mind would be free from thoughts and memories of unimportant things and would retain all the important information and memories.
Your surroundings or environment also have a bearing on your concentration levels. If your surroundings are not properly ventilated or make you feel cramped for space or the temperature is too high or low for comfort or contain any sort of distractions for you, etc., then your concentration level would be badly affected.
One of the many, and possibly the best, ways of dealing with concentration issues is to set priorities in your life. This involves determining the things, people, tasks or matters that hold primary importance in your life. It is a no-brainer that your health, well-being and family come before anything else in your life. After that your academic studies and preparation for a better future/life holds importance. These and other similarly important things should hold the primary focus of all your mental energies, thoughts and concentration. Things other than these should receive the minimum of your attention and focus, if any.
So in a nutshell, concentration is important for a number of reasons:
• It helps you achieve much more in whatever you are doing.
• Eliminates/minimises mistakes in the task on hand.
• Saves time.
• Frees your mind from unnecessary thoughts.
• Conserves your mental energies.
• Improves your memory.
• Makes you a responsible person.
• Improves your brain functionality (with less brain load) both in the short-term and long-term.
• Helps you control thoughts and get rid of negative, self-defeating thoughts.
• Strengthens your intuition (with improved focus).
• Helps you develop stamina for doing anything and things in general.
Availing all the aforementioned benefits of concentration would help you a great deal in living a better, peaceful and fruitful life. So make the effort to concentrate and focus on important things all the time.
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Set study goals: First things first; start with the basics and set your study goals.
Make a study timetable: Prepare a weekly study timetable. Set a routine for everything – your bedtime, meals and, most importantly, studies. Try to stick to your study timetable as best as you can.
Learn to say no: You need not give up all your social activities, but you have to set some limits. In short, learn to say no when you know you really should.
Turn off all electronic devices: Tablets and smart phones expose us to a world of distractions. Your mobile device is the enemy of productivity and you should declare your study space and time a gadget-free zone.
Set reminders: Post-it and reminder apps exists can help immensely.
Reflect and adjust: Closely monitor yourself and make adjustments. Regularly ask yourself the following questions: What is my main goal? What is my goal for the week? What do I need to do today? Where am I at the moment? Is this technique/schedule/situation working? Is it worth improving? How can I improve it?
Get rid of the negativity: If you’re one of those people who say, “I hate studying!” or “I’m too upset/tired/sick/whatever to study”, then you must learn how to replace these negative statements with positive ones, so you don’t automatically shut down when you open up your notes.
