Exercises To Achieve A Healthy Brain For All Day Focus
The brain is probably the most important part of our bodies. Without it, we would be unable to perform typical essential tasks such as feeding ourselves, drinking water, sleeping and using Netflix. I assume you detected my sarcasm there, obviously, sleep isn’t that big of a deal. At least not as big of a deal as the ability to competently use Netflix is to our species continued survival. But what if you had a healthy brain for all day focus and could achieve so much more?
The heart is important also (don’t start ingesting fast food on me now). But the brain is a pretty darn necessary organ. And the fact is, all too often, that big brain of ours is depleted of focus. We tend to use the urban slang, “brain fog,” to describe a brain that isn’t good at focus. When I was a kid, they called that ADD. I’m not too sure that was my dilemma to overcome, however, I think I just preferred playing outside to Bunsen burners and reading about the life cycle of worms.
Adulting changed everything though. Focusing became less of an option and more of a necessary evil that must be endured. As an adult, you need a healthy brain with all day focus. We all have to work. We all have to watch our kids and make sure they don’t lose any limbs while playing on the playground equipment. But there are further incentives to increased focus: It literally makes us more competent at life. Research shows that those who can sustain longer focus are simply more intelligent at performing brainy tasks. If a person can’t focus for extended periods of time, that person never gets any deeper, more intimate knowledge on an array of subjects. They simply become “familiar” with lots of differing concepts. They never get beyond the shell of it.
Being “shallow,” for lack of a better term, means never being able to appropriately excel at mental challenges. It means living a life of challenged competency. How can you grow a business when you are too focus-challenged to dive into the depths of the subject matter you are persuing? I’d say the challenges posed by not having a good ability to focus are clear.
What If You Had A Healthy Brain For All Day Focus?
You might be rich. You might be an astronaut today. You might be a big time movie star that doesn’t even have to pay for Netflix. The fact is, a healthy brain for all day focus means that you are able to achieve so many more tasks and learn a slew of new skills. You become a weapon of brain power. A focused brain is an unstoppable brain.
So what can we do in order to improve our brain’s focus? We are glad you asked.
First, let’s assume the brain to be a muscle. Anatomically speaking, your brain is not really a muscle, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s pretend that it is. Are you still focused? I hope so. With muscles, we train them to do all types of functions. We train them to gain more strength. We riddle them with tasks that cause them to garner more coordination skills. Reaching for a bottle of water may be easy, but you need to train your muscles to return a ping pong serve (unless you are Forest Gump, because he was just a natural ping pong machine).
The point is, muscles need additional training (and sometimes supplementation) in order to truly thrive beyond what’s typical. The brain is no different. The modern world exposes the brain to trivial matters consistently. Our world is a smartphone scroll. We’ve been a bit dumbed down in our pursuit for convenience and tech savvy. Technology is great, but the side effects that debilitate our focus is not so great.
If your brain only scrolls a Facebook feed with your thumb, don’t expect your brain to evolve into a machine that focuses on long term tasks and deeper concepts. Just like your muscles, if they are only exposed to walking to a burger joint and reaching for ketchup, you can’t expect them to naturally acquire the ability to juggle.
Here are some good brain exercises that can help you train that “muscle” up.
So let’s get right to it, shall we? Just try and focus, I promise it will be worth it.
Learn Distraction Free Tasking
Did you know that when you shift your attention away from an online task because you want to look up “which centipedes can kill me?’ it takes an average of 25 minutes to return to what you were doing? (source That’s pretty much a death sentence to productivity. The Internet is too enticing. We want to search every random thought we have.
To deal, have a document open that allows you to add to a list. When a crazy thought or question pops into your head, jot it down on the list. This will relieve some of that anxiety that if you “don’t search it right away, you will forget it.” In this way, you stay focused and train your brain that frequent and long distractions aren’t a part of your lifestyle. You learn to focus longer on what matters.
Brain Strength Training
At some point, you just have to life the weight or run a little bit longer if you want to get into better shape. The brain is the same gig. At some juncture, you will have to just say “I’m going to stay focused” and force yourself to do so. This is essentially strength training for your brain. Its your brain lifting a little more weight today than it did yesterday. And it works.
Training your brain to overcome the sensation to daze off into la-la land will help improve the future of your brain’s ability to concentrate. Your brain simply needs exercise.
Brain Meditation
Anxiety and stress are the killers of all things concentration. If you are worried about paying the electric bill, it might be difficult to research your new business plan or focus on setting up a new client’s Powerpoint presentation.
Meditation is a proven helper in the genre of stress and anxiety relief. If can help you clear your mind of the “brain clutter” that might be hindering your ability to stay focused.
Brain Exercises
No, this time, I really mean move your muscles around (and not just for ketchup). Frequent moderate exercise is proven to help increase the mind’s superpowers. Exercise will also serve to unclutter the stressors that life has piled up in your big brain. You need the junk gone so that you can stay concentrated on the things which matter most.
Memory Workouts
Want a better memory? Well, wouldn’t it make sense to start remembering things? Of course, it most certainly would. If you want to get better at anything, do it more often. Your ability to focus and memorize can be improved by performing brain exercises intended to strengthen those inner-functions of your brain.
An improved memory means you become a more intelligent writer, you increase your vocabulary, and you become a person who’s super cool in a bar conversation.
There are lots of memory challenges online that can help you improve this aspect of your brain. Why not dedicate just a few moments a day to this training?
Read Longer – Read Slower
Stop trying to explode through long text. Stop skimming and looking for header text and bold print. Read the full paragraphs and read them slowly and carefully. After that, watch the magic of your brain come to life. Your brain will learn to stop bouncing your focus up and down the page, and it will come to expect information and concept absorption.
Right now, your brain just wants to get through a page of text as quickly as possible. This means missed learning opportunities. It’s a natural process of dumbing down your brain. Stop allowing this to happen.
Brain Supplements
Pharma makes a fortune slinging ADHD meds. I’m not here to decide the legitimacy of such things, but what I can say is that I have had success taking brain supplements. I have a list of the best nootropics for a good reason. They do work.
In my opinion, they only work when you combine them with some of the other suggestions. I mean, don’t take a nootropic and eat a crappy diet and just keep searching random thoughts on Google all day. That’s going to be a waste. But if you are in the game for change and willing to make some small adaptations, a nootropic probably will help you.
In the end, a healthy brain with all day focus is achievable. But it does require some work on your part. My biggest fear now is that you might simply forget to do the work? I’m kidding….kind of!