How to Stay Focused for a Long Time

How to concentrate on studying for long hours has been a critical issue that many students face today. Many mental concentration strategies have been developed to solve this for students wanting to improve their focus and concentration. Our focus is like a muscle, it gets better with training and the more you train it, the better it will become.

How to Improve Focus and Concentration?

Generally speaking, meditation, regular exercising, and reading help you focus better for a longer period of time.

1. Meditation

If you wake up and sit still just focusing on the slow and deep breaths that you are taking, this is a basic meditation practice. Try to concentrate on how your chest widens and shrinks and when does your belly go up and down.

2. Exercising 

Although work out is all about training the body and increasing its endurance and stamina, it helps improve your focus and concentration. Perhaps because physical training gets you to endure the physical pain for future gains. That’s how exactly focus and mind training works. You hesitate before studying a certain subject and you delay specific assignments because they require a certain level of concentration that you’re not ready to deliver just yet. People who are concerned with how to stay focused and motivated in life, exercise regularly and eat healthy food, get their choices reflected on boosting their cognitive abilities.

3. Reading 

Reading with full concentration is simply studying. When you train your body, you train yourself to control it from falling into any distractions to just finish your work out chores. It is the same with studying; you train your brain to stay focused to finish the section you need to study now. In other words, train your brain to stay focused on just reading for longer periods of time; that’s how focusing and concentration kick in!

How to Focus Better When Studying?

1. Start Small 

Like training your muscles, you cannot just run a marathon first thing. Start small; if you focus for only 10 minutes, make them 15 then take 5 minutes break and then focus again for another 20 minutes and so on. If you try to stay focused for 60 minutes as a start, failure will hit you. Your mind’s muscle stretching takes time, so be patient.

2. Plan Your Breaks 

It's no surprise that we study better when we know that we will take this break to play PS or go shopping right after. This is one of the best methods on how to focus your mind on one thing. 

3. Don’t Multitask 

It’s a myth! Studies show that people who multitask produce poor results compared to their counterparts conducting similar tasks but one thing at a time. If you want to know how to focus on studying for exams and how to concentrate on studies during exams, stray away from your multitasking bad habits and start focusing on one subject and/or assignment.

4. Eyes on the Prize 

Another challenge is how to stay focused on your goals. Staying focused on goals and priorities will keep you naturally and effortlessly motivated to study with more concern and better focus. Maybe it is not how to stay focused while studying is what is hard, it is the WHY? so remind yourself of your personal reasons to study better.

5. Work Smart Not Hard

After all, remember it is not about how many hours you’ve spent studying, but the quality of the material you’ve digested. We’ve all been there at the night before our exams, jammed with material that needs to be studied. We do it when pressured and we comprehend a lot of material at once and we perform greatly at the end! So why not use our time wisely and work smart instead of working hard? Go figure.

Do you have studying tips that we missed? Tell us more about your studying methods and what you do to stay focused.