Tips to improve focus/concentration?

I know everyones going to recommend it but meditation if you aren’t already. Also try to have a distraction free time whenever you can, meaning doing just one task like reading with your phone and anything else that could potentially distract you off and away. This should help as it helped me. Good luck !

 

Firstly, what is the rubber band trick??
If your life is stressful right now it is quite natural to have difficulty concentrating. For me to get into a book I have to set aside time to read. I give myself at least an hour. And a brief history of time is a rather heavy (though accessible for the subject) book. Don’t feel bad if your mind wanders a bit. For that book you might go online and read some crib notes along with it or some commentary before reading a chapter. Might help focus. I recall trying to read that a while ago having similar issues. You might also try to get it on tape (audible is great for that) and listen to it in the car or on head phones. I do both sometimes (read and listen) as I have an audible subscription and it doesn’t cost much. Some sections you might even skip through if it bogs down too much.

 

try practicing singletasking.
and not just when you are reading, but everytime you do something.
take up one task, complete it and only then move on to something else.
this way your mind will (after sometime) get trained to think only about the task at hand.
so this will reduce / eliminate mind wandering into offtopic stuff while you are reading a book ( or doing any other task ).
hope this helps.

 

I have the same problem...

 

1. Meditation
2. GTD theory which frees up your mind so you can concentrate on the task you are doing
3. Pomodoros