25 Oct 5 Mindful Exercises to Increase Focus

One of the key ingredients to success is the focus. Many people consider it as the most crucial element for success. This is simply because focus acts as a gateway to all your thinking mechanisms which includes memory, problem solving, decision making, learning, and perception. This is why it is very important to know how to increase focus if you want to achieve success.

Why Learn to Focus?

We live in an era of multitaskers. Many people have the ability to carry out different tasks at the same time. They are so habituated to multitasking that sometimes they do it without actually realizing it.

Well, it is good to multi-task. It saves you some or maybe a lot of time. But what if it is affecting your productivity. This cannot be a good thing, right?

No matter how cool you find multitasking, if you fail to focus completely on your tasks, then it isn’t of much good to you. For example, you are talking to someone on phone but thinking about the things you have to do today. Since you do not focus completely on either of the two things, you are likely to miss out some details from the conversation which may or might not be important. Also, you might miss out some of the tasks which you have to complete in the present day. What if things you miss out both from the conversation and your to-do-list were very important? You will have to bear the consequences, isn’t it?

Believe it or not, when you are handling several things at the same time, you are likely to make more mistakes. Your quality of work is affected. As a result, the end results might not be as good as you expected them to be.

So, if you think about it as a whole, do you really think multitasking saves you time? The answer is NO, isn’t it?

How to Focus?

When millions of things are going on in your mind it is hard to focus. Many times when you are doing something very important, a random thought out of nowhere will pop into your mind. This thought might take away all your attention while your important work is still on the table. This is unfair but what to do. The mind is a wanderer and it will jump from one thought to another and the process goes on. This ability of mind makes it hard to focus on the work you are doing. So what should you do increase your focus? Well, the answer is Mindfulness. Being mindful means being aware of your thoughts and what is happening in the present moment. This awareness can actually help you in bringing your focus to the task you are doing.

Listed below are 5 simple mindful exercises which can help you in increasing your focus.

Mindful Exercises to Increase Focus

1. The Hand Exercise: Grasp your hands tightly for about 10 seconds and release them. Now focus on how your hands feel and stay focused for as long as you can or till that feeling goes away.
2. The Mental Focus Exercise: Place an object in front of you and start focusing on it. Stare at the object as long as you can. Keep a check on when your mind begins to wander, acknowledge the thoughts which it brings and then lovingly bring it to the object you were focusing. The longer you are able to focus on the object, the more your mindfulness will increase. This, in turn, will enhance your focusing abilities. You could also focus on your breathing.
3. The Music Exercise: Play your favorite music and listen to it carefully or rather say mindfully. Pay a close attention to how that music makes you feel. What emotions does it bring out? If some memories start surfacing then how do those memories make you feel? You can even engage with your emotions to know where they would take you.
4. The Sense of Smell Exercise: Try smelling some strongly smelled substance such as coffee beans, perfume etc. Now pay attention to what that smell does to your nose or brain and what feelings do they evoke.
5. The Movie Exercise: While watching a movie pay attention to how you get engrossed in the movie. Observe closely what emotions does that movie bring out in you and take a note of it.

These mindful exercises can be practiced anywhere. So make them a part of your daily routine to increase focus.

Purva Jain

Purva is a freelance writer from Udaipur, India. She covers a wide range of topics including health, lifestyle, news, food, and travel. You can reach out to her at [email protected].

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