Other healthy steps to improve focus: eat a Mediterranean-style diet, which has been shown to support brain health treat underlying conditions and change medications that may be affecting your ability to focus. And when we sleep, we reduce stress hormones that can be harmful to the brain, and we clear out proteins that injure it."Īim for seven to eight hours of sleep each night, and 150 minutes per week of aerobic exercise, such as brisk walking. "When you exercise, you increase the availability of brain chemicals that promote new brain connections, reduce stress, and improve sleep. "There is a direct link between exercise and cognitive ability, especially attention," Dr. Many aspects of a healthy lifestyle can help attention, starting with sleep and exercise. So if you reach a certain level of sustained attention, pushing it to the next level can help improve it, and this may translate to everyday life."Ī healthier lifestyle. "But there is evidence that a person's ability to pay attention can be improved by progressively pushing the person to higher levels of performance.
"The goal of playing these games is not to get better at them, but to get better in the cognitive activities of everyday life," Willment says. Computerized cognitive training games aim to improve your response times and attention. She recommends sitting still for a few minutes each day, closing your eyes, and focusing on your breathing as well as the sounds and sensations around you.Ĭognitive training. "Mindfulness is about focusing attention on the present moment, and practicing mindfulness has been shown to rewire the brain so that attention is stronger in everyday life," says Kim Willment, a neuropsychologist with Brigham and Women's Hospital. To improve attention, consider the following strategies.
"By training your brain to monitor if your mind is wandering, you strengthen the monitoring process and the ability to maintain focus on a single task." If so, just refocus on what you're reading," she says. When it goes off, ask yourself if your mind has wandered. "Read something for 30 minutes, setting a timer to go off every five minutes. Want a way to boost your attention and focus? Neuropsychologist Kim Willment of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital suggests a single-task exercise like reading. "When there's too much material, it burdens our filtering system and it's easy to get distracted," Dr. We are bombarded with information from TVs, computers, and messages such as texts or emails. Having too much alcohol impairs thinking and causes interrupted sleep, which affects concentration. Some drugs, especially anticholinergics (such as treatments for incontinence, depression, or allergies), can slow processing speed and your ability to think clearly.Įxcessive drinking. "You waste precious cognitive resources when you spend too much time trying to make out what's written on a page or just hear what someone is saying," Dr. So can the effects of vision or hearing loss. Depression or sleep disorders (such as sleep apnea) can undermine your ability to concentrate.
The following factors can also affect your concentration. Daffner says this can be caused by a number of physiological stressors such as inflammation, injury to blood vessels (especially if you have high blood pressure), the buildup of abnormal proteins, and naturally occurring brain shrinkage. Like a computer that slows with use, the brain accumulates wear and tear that affects processing. Kirk Daffner, a neurologist and director of the Center for Brain/Mind Medicine at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital. What happened to the laser-sharp focus you once enjoyed? "Older people tend to have more difficulty filtering out stimuli that are not relevant to the task at hand," says Dr. You're trying to concentrate, but your mind is wandering or you're easily distracted. Mindfulness, cognitive training, and a healthy lifestyle may help sharpen your focus.