Do you always find yourself asking this question—“Why can’t I focus?” If you are, these eight tips can help improve your focus and concentration. Read on to find out more.
Why Can’t I Focus? Your Question Answered
1. Understand the Cause to Know the Solution
Wondering “Why can’t I focus on anything anymore?” Don’t worry, you’re not alone.
The struggle comes from the fact your problem may be due to a host of possible causes. These can include the following:
- Underlying medical condition such as hypothyroidism
- Brain fog
- Stress, anxiety, and depression
- Hormone imbalance
- Physical and emotional trauma
- Environment
Learning the real reason behind your lack of concentration can save you the trouble of trial and error. It also boosts the chances of your techniques succeeding over the long term.
To understand the cause, you may need the help of professionals like doctors, counselors, therapists, and psychologists. These people can conduct tests or walk you through a certain process, so you can pinpoint the real cause of why you have a hard time focusing.
2. Manage Your Time Wisely to Improve Focus
Some people do well with multitasking. In fact, they thrive under a lot of pressure.
Many don’t. If this is you, one of the ways to improve focus and concentration is to practice time management.
Today, you can choose a variety of techniques or strategies. These can range from using time blocks or adhering to the Pareto principle.
You can even combine some of them. The most important thing is you commit yourself to it.
Do your best to follow the schedule you made. If situations change (as they often do), then adjust your strategies accordingly.
3. Sleep to Reset Your Brain
People who ask “Why can’t I focus on anything?” may find their brain constantly active. It’s like there’s a lot of buzzing and talking inside.
Not only is this tiring, but it can also increase feelings of anxiety and panic. Sometimes, the best way to focus is to reset and to do that, you need to sleep.
If you can’t sleep at night, you can consider taking supplements with valerian root.
This herb improves your brain’s response to an inhibitory neurotransmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). It decreases the high levels of activity in certain parts of the brain linked to your fight-or-flight response.
4. Eat the Right Diet to Enhance Mood
The right diet can also be one of the ways to improve memory and focus. Science suggested a link between digestion and stress, which can dampen concentration.
When you’re under a stressful situation, your body releases a stress hormone called cortisol. This has a direct effect on your appetite, increasing it.
This is because it tells your brain you may be under threat. Boosting your appetite is one of the strategies to make sure you have enough fuel or energy in case you need to fight or run away.
Worse, cortisol also tends to increase your need for foods high in fat and sugar, and these can only enhance your likelihood of developing obesity.
Obesity, meanwhile, can increase leptin resistance. Leptin is a hormone that tells your brain you’re already full or satiated so you should not feel hungry anymore.
When you’re resistant, which can happen due to excessive amounts of fat cells in the body, your brain doesn’t get the message. In turn, it forces the body to produce more leptin.
If you’re highly sensitive to stress, you can learn to control reaching for comfort food by reducing your access to unnecessary fat and sugars. You can also benefit from consuming super blends such as Alkaline Greens.
What they do is address your hunger without consuming high calories, fat, and sugar your body doesn’t need.
5. Take Natural Brain Vitamins to Boost Concentration
Some vitamins are your best friends when you need to learn how to improve focus and concentration. These include the following:
- Vitamin B12 can help in the formation of red blood cells. These are the ones that transport the much-needed oxygen to the brain so it can function well.
- Vitamin D is beneficial in clearing brain fog.
- Magnesium is a good mineral if you have hypothyroidism, a condition characterized by an underactive thyroid gland. Due to hormone imbalance, it may increase the risk of anxiety symptoms, migraines, and brain fog.
- Vitamin C can increase the survival of the neurons, or the nerve cells that make up the brain.
6. Practice Mindfulness to Calm Yourself
What is mindfulness? It is a practice of consciously bringing your thoughts to the present moment and being aware of the surroundings.
It’s a huge help for people who ask, “Why can’t I focus?” Oftentimes, it happens because you concern yourself with what already happened and what’s about to come.
Whether the past and future experiences are good or bad, they can shift your energy from the task at hand in the here and now. Worse, you cannot change the past and you cannot guarantee the future.
How do you achieve mindfulness? Here are some simple steps:
- Stop everything you do, close your eyes, and sit properly.
- Take a few large deep breaths, breathing in through your nose and out with your mouth.
- While you’re doing that, pay attention to what’s happening in your surroundings.
- If your mind wanders, allow it to do so. Just make sure you can gently bring yourself back to the present moment.
- Do this without any form of judgment. Take what you sense as what they are.
Once you master mindfulness, you can already do it anytime, anywhere, like when eating your meals or driving the car.
7. Bring Your Brain to Alpha State to Relax
More experts suggest the brain operates through electrical impulses, and in the process, they produce different types of brainwaves. The kind of brainwave then contributes to your overall state of mind.
So far, brainwaves fall into four categories:
- Beta, which has the lowest amplitude but the fastest frequency. It is what your brain creates when you engage your mind in mental activities.
- Alpha state, which has a higher amplitude but slower than beta in frequency. It’s your non-arousal state and what occurs when you’re in deep relaxation.
- Theta waves, which is the third level of a brainwave. It is what you produce when you daydream.
- Delta waves, which has the lowest frequency but highest amplitude. You achieve that when you’re in a dreamless and deep sleep.
While beta waves center around logic and reason, they can also induce stress and anxiety since they can act as inner critics.
In the process, you can no longer focus on what you’re doing. Many people even experience analysis paralysis.
What is analysis paralysis? It is a state wherein a person can no longer make any decision due to over-analysis or overthinking.
To take a rest, you can bring your subconscious to the alpha state. You are still aware and awake but you enter into a more relaxed state.
To help you achieve that, you can use guided tracks complete with narratives and sounds that stimulate the production of these alpha waves.
8. Reduce the Jitters
Sometimes, the reason why you can’t focus is because of your coffee. Some people are too sensitive to the effects of caffeine, which include palpitations, restlessness, and agitation.
These body changes can then mimic what you sense when you are under stress or anxious. A smart technique on how to improve concentration and focus is to cut back on caffeine to reduce or avoid the jitters.
Instead, you can consider coffee alternatives such as guayusa which has the same effect as caffeine but without the nerves.
You can also find maca and tulsi, which are both adaptogenic herbs. These are substances that improve your coping mechanism with stress.
“Why can’t I focus on one thing?” Well, the reasons are aplenty.
The silver lining is the fact that you can do something about it to help improve your focus and concentration. In turn, you can accomplish more and feel more fulfilled.
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