Concentration and Focus Tips/Masterpost
Having troubles staying focused on your work? Here are some times for you!
Focuus Timers basically are apps for your mobile phone that help you focus on your work and hinder you from getting distracted too much. Here are my three favorites:
Tide: Tide gives you a motivational quote everyday, that you can also save as a picture. You decide how long one work interval and how long your break shall be, and it notifies you once the time is over. You can also set a daily goal and have a look into your statistics, to see if you are imroving. Furthermore, you can choose between multiple ambience sounds, like rain, forest, distant chatting of people, and a soft and calm piano. If that is too calm for you, you can enable that you are able to listen to music on the phone at the same time, so you hear both, or only the music.
Wind: Wind will allow you to choose a daily goal, but instead of giving you precise time intervals, it has an indefinite timer. You start it once you start working and hit it again when you need to take a break, for which you can either set a timer or choose it to be indefinite as well. It also notifies you if you get distracted and remebers you to stay focused. This is great for everyone with varying concentration spans, you can either work for hours and reach your daily goal with just to intervals, or you can take a break literaly every ten minutes, it is totally up to you.
Forest: Forest lets you decide on a certain time intervall everytime you start working. You can choose the same amount of time everytime, or you vary it depending it on your tasks and expected concentration. If you reach this chosen goal without closing the app, a tree will be planted in your virtual forest, and you will get some coins. With these coins you can buy beautiful different kinds of trees. If you close the app however, your tree will die! So if you are easily distracted by your mobile phone, this is perfect for you. It is made cute and motivates you. You can also upgrade to a premium account to help plant trees in real life!
You will have to find out for yourself what music works best for you while studying, but here are some suggestions:
-) some people can only study well when in total silence; in this case, it would be best for you to study in a library, or if it is quite at home, study at home. Not in a coffe shop, not with friends or such. If you have to study at somewhere were it´s noisy, buy noice-supressing headphones to keep out most of the noice. When it is warm enough and you live somewhere near nature, you can also go out and study in the forest or in a (quiet) park, if there are not many people, children, dogs etc.
-) ambience: ambience is basically backgroundes noices like rain, wind, distant chatter or forest sounds; there are many apps for your mobile phone that can provide ambience sounds, and there is also a lot on youtube and spotify
Ambience - Geräusche der Natur (sounds of nature)
Naturgeräusche (sounds of nature)
Weißes Rauschen (white noice)
Spotify Rain and Calming Melodies
Spotify Playlist Nature Sounds
-) classical/instrumental music: piano, violin
Some of you might need/prefer classical music, like paino, violin, orchestral or simply put calming instrumental music, so here are some resources!
My own instrumental Playlist
classical piano and violin
Instrumental concentration music
-) Binaural Beats und Waves
Binaural Beats and different Waves like Alpha Waves nowadays exist for literally every possible use. While they might not help everyone, there are people who find them really useful, so make sure you check them out to know if they are for you!
Mixed Binaural Beats Playlist
Binaural Beats for Focus Playlist
Mixed Playlist with Binaural Beats, Ambience and Instrumental Music
Binaural Beats and Waves Album
Alpha Waves Excellent Memory Playlist
Alpha Waves Study Music Mini-Playlist
Memory Improving Binaural Beats
Concentration Improving Binaural Beats
Concentration And Memory Improving Binaural Beats And Beta Waves
Happiness Beats and Waves
Binaural Beats For Concentration and Memory
-) Figure out what´s right for YOU!
Now what I linked above are only the most common types of music someone might listen to while studying, but in the end you and only you can know what you need and is best for you! This can be something of the above, or something totally different like metal or electro or whatever! (For everyone needing hard electro with vocals, I suggest trying the band Solar Fake ,they make hard electronic music with vocals that are changed to sound harder and more electronic! Just don´t listen to the lyrics (tw depression, self-harm, suicide, emotional abuse), only to the sound. Works great for me!)
-) Changing the music depending on the activity
You may find music that works universally, but most people need totally different kinds of music depending on what they are doing. You may listen to something different when you are taking notes than when you are revising!
Also how high you will set the volume may vary depending on what you want to focus on. I personally prefer very calm and quiet music while taking notes, and hard loud electro while revising too stay awake and motivated. Just don´t harm your ears please!
-) If you listen to “normal music” -> some tipps to find the right
If you find that binaural beats, alpha waves, instrumental or classical music and ambience are not for you, you will probably listen to a band or an artist you like. Here are some tipps, how to figure out the right one for maximal focus!
1. Music: The music they make should fit what you need, so if you are very tired, it should be music that wakes you up! Probably fast beats, Pop, Electro, Rock or something like that. If you are restless or stressed, better choose calmer music that is not too fast and relaxes you.
2. Voice: If you are like me, you may find that certain voices have a certain effect on you. If so, choose a singer with a voice, that calms you emotionally, that reduces the stress and makes you feel save and comfortable. It will help you deal with negative emotions that will probably occur once in a while due to stress, pressure, insecurities, and lack of sleep, or may even help to prevent or reduce these feelings!
For many people it is easier to listen to lyrics that are not in the language they are studying in or reading texts in, since this might confuse you and your brain mixes the sentences together, which you don´t want! So if you like songs or bands singing in a different language, try them first. My mother tongue is German and I only listen to English songs while studying.
When it comes to the lyrics itself, don´t choose something that awakes a lot of memories. So don´t want your mind to wander around at the beautiful beach you visited last summer, or to get sad over your last realtionship and it´s end. So choose lyrics that do not awake vivid memories! Apart from that, you have to know for yourself what topics don´t destract you. Many people might want shallow lyrics while studying, but I don´t mind deep lyrics as well, even if they are negative, because since they are in a different language, I don´t even notice them conciously.
Also, it mostly is best if you choose songs you already know well. Otherwise your mind might concentrate more on getting to know the song, the melody, voice, meaning and lyrics, than on the actual task!
-) This should be pretty obvius, but you have to drink a lot to stay concentrated - and by that I don´t mean tons of coffee, juice, soda or soft drinks! You should drink around 2 litres of water or unsweetened tea when you want to stay focused.
-) Also, if you need to stay awake long, drink green tea instead of coffee! It is better for your stomach, your heart (too much coffee can actually harm your heart and it needs a lot more of green tea to come to this point) and it is way less addictive. A nice bonus: It can help against depression and stress (and we all know that both occur reguarly near finals). Don´t like the taste of green tea? Mix it with fruit tee and make sure that you do it at least half/half. It is still very effective and you won´t taste much of the green tea now!
-) If you really need to drink coffee, pour a shot of hazelnut syrup in it (but not too much)! It tastes better and my experience is (as someone who normally drinks coffee without any sugar but the one that is in the milk) that the sugar helps the coffeein to operate faster and stronger, so you don´t have to make the coffee as strong as you normally would. It´s also milder in your stomach and in my opinion tastes better!
This too should be obvious but many of us tend to forget about it. Remeber to let in fresh air every once in a while, or leave your window open if it´s quiet and warm enough outside. The brain needs oxygen to work and focusing, thinking, learning, studying are all brain work, so - no fresh air, no oxygen, no concentration.
No, you don´t have to live of fruits, salats and nuts. But there are some things regarding your diet choices you should consider:
So many diets cut out carbs or cut them to a minimum and honestly it´s one of the worst things you can do. Your brain needs carbs to work, and your whole body needs it as well. So if you cut them down, not only do you feel cold and a lack of energy, but you literally HARM YOUR BRAIN! If you eat less than 70-80 gramms of carbs a day for several days or even weeks, your brain will be damaged. And for everyone who does it because it helps to loose weight: Yes, you loose weight faster this way, because instead of burning the carbs you should, your body burns its fat. But this is not healthy and not how it shoud be! So, don´t cut the carbs out, your body and your brain need them and by leaving them out, you not only won´t be able to concentrate well but you also harm your brain and whole body!
-) Treats are allowed, but not too much
Although you should eat healthy, you still can treat yourself every once in a while. A piece of chocolate, the pizza slize you crave or the ice cream you´ve been wanting for days won´t harm your body or your concentration. Just don´t eat it too much, especially the fatty things. Fat holds back the carbs from getting in your bloodstream and as we already established, these carbs are damn important for you! So, to much fat will hinder you from being concentrated over a longer time span.
If you are feeling low on energy and can´t concentrate well, try eating a piece of grape sugar. It´s literally glucose and thereby the fastet type of carbs, which means that they will reach your brain within a few minutes!
I really hope that this helps some of you! Also, if there´s anything I forgot, feel free to add!
Also I´ve been working on this post for days so I am grateful for every reblog! <3
