How to Improve Your Attention Span: 8 Best Strategies

Why You Struggle With Focus
8 Ways to Improve Attention Span
Additional Tips to Increase Your Attention Span
Improve Your Attention Span

In the modern world, most people cannot focus well. They constantly distract themselves with media, entertainment, substances, and never even consider improving their attention spans.

Instead of spending their time productively and building themselves up, they waste their potential on mind-numbing apps and entertainment. Over time the distractions fry their brains, reduce their mental capabilities, and limit their attention spans to that of a goldfish.

As sad as it sounds, though, there is a great opportunity. While everyone else gets more and more distracted, you can become more and more focused.

You can become a man that can accomplish any task both efficiently, quickly, and stand out from the masses. All it takes is improving your attention span, taking a step back from degeneracy, learning upon your mistakes, and using some other helpful strategies.

In this article, I’ll tell you why you struggle with focus, and share 8 best ways to improve your attention span. Let’s begin.

Why You Struggle With Focus

The modern world has many distractions and things that are meant to take away your most precious and valuable resources – time and attention. The more you pay attention to them, the more your mind becomes unable to focus well.

To improve your attention span, we first need to identify reasons you struggle with focus, and how they ruin your ability to work productively.

The first and main reason for a short attention span is constant overstimulation.

1: Your Brain is Overstimulated

The modern world is noisy. Phones, gadgets, social media apps – all these things try their best to catch your attention until you buy something from an advertisement.

It’s fine to use these technologies for work or entertainment from time to time, but the more you engage with them, the more your mind gets clouded.

Your brain gets bombarded with dopamine, information, flashy images, and all of them stay in your mind to distract you from the Present – something that is truly important.

Whenever you try to focus on your studies, work on a project, or do anything else that is productive, your brain tries to get you away from the process back to doom scrolling through the TikTok feed that never ends.

One of the main conditions of effective, focused work is the clarity of mind, and if you don’t possess it, you won’t be able to focus, no matter how hard you try.

2: You Aren’t Hydrated or Rested Enough

Another reason you have struggles with attention span is dehydration and lack of sleep. Both of these things help your body function well and produce effective results at work or other activities.

When you neglect drinking enough clean water, you experience brain fog that prevents you from having clarity and calmness that are necessary for focused work.

About 60% of the human body is water. Knowing this, is it any wonder that your brain isn’t able to work well? During dehydration, it lacks the material necessary to function, receive nutrients, and transfer data between neurons.

Not getting enough sleep is a problem, too. Many men waste their sleep on jacking off to porn, scrolling on social media, or trying to work. Even though it may help you finish that project earlier, it actually deals more damage to you in the long run:

You get more and more brain fog, have your thinking clouded by negative thoughts and judgment that, in the long run, takes away your focus and ability to be productive.

3: You Rarely Practice Focused Work

The last reason for having a low attention span is that you rarely practice focused work. Just like any other skill, deep work is a skill that can be learned if practiced regularly over time.

If you spend most of your time consuming content, comfort, and frying your brain with instant dopamine, it’s no wonder that you find it hard to focus.

If you truly want to improve your attention span, you should, from now on, maintain focus on this article and read every sentence instead of just skimming the post. This is one of the steps you can take to improve your focus right here in the moment.

Working with focus, or even focusing on monotonous tasks, is extremely difficult at first, especially if you despise these activities and haven’t practiced them much before.

But if you step outside of your comfort zone, stop letting TikTok fuck your brain, and commit yourself to practicing deep work for an hour every day, you will continuously get better at it and become more effective than most people.

So, how do you improve your attention span, and how do you stop letting technology distract you from what’s important?

8 Ways to Improve Attention Span

There are various ways you can improve your attention span. The solutions and strategies that you’ll learn in this article offer a holistic and multi-sided approach to solving your problem.

The first and most important thing you should do is reduce overstimulation.

1: Stop Overstimulating Your Brain

As I wrote before, overstimulation is the main reason for having a low attention span. Billions of people use social media platforms that take their minds away from the Present, stimulate them with flashy imagery, and leave them unable to concentrate on difficult and monotonous tasks like writing.

The more you scroll on social media apps, the more you want to consume content, and the less time you want to spend on good habits that would help you in life. That’s why you should get rid of these platforms entirely.

Delete your social media apps and accounts from your phone. Mute notifications and minimize the noise coming from your phone. Set its color scheme to black and white, and change the background image to a motivating picture or your schedule.

Aside from that, spend less time in noisy environments, such as public transport, parties, and popular places. Sounds extreme, I know, but you won’t do this forever. It’s a temporary measure meant to help your brain unwind and repair the damage done to it.

Spend more time in silence and on less stimulating activities, such as reading books, solving puzzles, working on passion projects, and practicing other hobbies.

2: Drink More Water to Improve Your Attention Span

Another way to improve your attention span is by drinking more water regularly. Dehydration impairs our minds’ work and worsens it to the point where we can no longer focus.

For this reason, you should drink at least 2-3 liters of water per day. Buy bottled water, or install a high-quality tap water filter in your house.

Additionally, if you need to leave your home frequently, buy a special 2+ liter bottle that contains the daily norm and helps you distribute it evenly throughout the day.

When you sit down to work or read a book, always grab a glass of water with you, so that you can deal with dehydration immediately.

It isn’t the most obvious solution when you struggle with focus, but it always helps greatly. Hydrate your body, and never allow it to run out of its most important resource.

3: Get Quality Sleep Regularly to Improve Your Attention Span

Sleep is something that is important at all times. Often, to perform well at work, we need enough quality rest so that our minds maintain clarity and the ability to focus.

Ventilate your room before bed, so that you find it easier to fall asleep. If you live in a warm country, sleep with open windows. Additionally, try not to eat big meals at least 3 hours before sleeping, and avoid looking at bright light in the evening.

To improve sleep, you can also look at sunlight right after waking up and lower your phone’s brightness. Installing the blue light filter can also help reduce the strain that the screens put on your eyes.

There are some other ways you can improve your sleep, and the best one of them is following the 10-3-1 rule: 10 hours before bed – no more caffeine. 3 hours before bed – no more eating. 1 hour before bed – no more technology.

The 10-3-1 rule alone will make it much easier for you to fall asleep and help you awake well-rested and ready for the day.

Related article: How to Properly Rest After a Workout

4: Read Classic Literature Daily

Your attention span needs improvement not only through indirect measures like the ones I named above, but through direct practice. Without practice, your skill of focusing will remain low, and you’ll find it hard to make more progress in your work.

To improve attention span, read more classic literature. Buy Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “1984”, and read 20 pages of these books every day in one sitting.

Why these books exactly? Before the 20th century, many authors expressed their thoughts on paper without worrying too much about readability, forcing the reader to focus and actively try to interpret what the author meant.

Thus, reading classic literature will force you to be more focused and keep you working for extended periods of time. Is it difficult? Yes, it is. Does it solve your problem? Yes, it does.

So, the next time you feel like scrolling on your phone, grab a classic book, and read it with focus for 30 minutes. It will change your life after a few months.

5: Meditate Every Morning to Increase Attention Span

Overstimulation through smartphones, social media, and other forms of distraction often causes brain fog, and it’s extremely difficult to focus when your mind is clouded with irrelevant thoughts.

That’s why I propose a great solution, not just to your short attention span, but to other problems connected with your mind – meditation.

It isn’t as complex or difficult as many people think it is. All you need to do is to simply watch your breath, focus on it for as long as possible, and return your attention back to breathing when you get distracted.

I’ve written a full guide about meditation, and you can check it out if you want to. For now, I want to focus on the benefits of regular meditation.

It clears your mind of thoughts, eliminates stress, brain fog, and anxiety, gives clarity, awareness of the Present moment, and improves your cognitive thinking skills. Therefore, meditation also improves your focus, as it removes the main hindrances to it.

If you’re interested in doing it, wake up early in the morning, make your bed, and meditate for 10-20 minutes every day. You can download a special meditation app Medito – it is free, and it has many audios for you to choose.

6: Change Your Environment to Improve Your Attention Span

Sometimes we find it hard to focus because we need a change in environment. We need a new place to work, read, and spend time in, so that our brains expand and enhance their existing neuron connections.

If the brain stays in the same circumstances, routine, and familiar settings for too long, it will experience brain fog, and you’ll struggle with focus again.

That is why you should try to work in different places from time to time. For example, if you usually work at home on your PC, try working in an Internet cafe using a laptop. A new environment will create different mental conditions for your mind, forcing it to focus.

Or, if you usually work in a noisy place, like an open office where it’s hard to concentrate, you can move to another quieter place, like a library.

Silence blocks the outside noise, allowing you to embrace work fully and achieve your goals faster.

Recommended article: How to Become More Self-Reliant and Independent

7: Do the Most Important Work Early to Improve Your Attention Span

Many people feel lazy and sluggish during the day, being unable to focus well or produce meaningful results in the usual waking hours. Great solutions are intermittent fasting and early deep work.

You see, when you eat big meals or try to focus when your mind is getting tired, it will inevitably look for an escape, and find it in social media, browsing the web, and doing other unproductive activities.

That’s why you should try the technique I’m about to tell you. Wake up at 5 AM, do your morning routine, and after you’re finished, do not rush to the kitchen for breakfast.

Instead, sit down, turn on your laptop, and give it your all. Do intense deep work for 1-2 hours on your most important tasks.

Intermittent fasting signals your brain that you are hungry, and that it’s time to “hunt”. Early in the morning, your mind also has enough clarity to focus, meaning that you’ll be able to complete more if you sit down and work.

8: Write Your Thoughts Down For Clarity

Often distracting thoughts can get overwhelming and take you away from what’s important. Even if you meditate, drink enough water, and create conditions necessary for focus, you’ll still find it hard to work from time to time.

That is why you should journal your thoughts on a frequent basis. Journaling is just that – expressing your thoughts on paper without holding back or overthinking.

The next time you feel brain fog, intense emotions, or other unpleasant things, write them down. Do not worry about grammar, pronunciation, or other similar things. Write your thoughts for 10 minutes straight, and allow your mind to clear itself.

Not only will you regain clarity and awareness of the Now, but you’ll also learn new things about yourself, your past, and your usual thought patterns in your mind. Therefore, you’ll gain more opportunities for personal development and healing past trauma that you may not be aware of.

If you want to, you can even make journaling your daily habit, and use it to generate new ideas, think about important life decisions, or reflect on your past to learn new lessons.

Either way, this habit doesn’t have downsides, and it can also teach you to focus directly by making you write your thoughts for 10-20 minutes straight.

Additional Tips to Increase Your Attention Span

There are some other things you can do to improve your focus:

Use the 20-second rule. When people try to focus, their workplace usually has tons of shiny objects and other things that distract them from working effectively. Before you start working, spend 20 or more seconds cleaning your desk, silencing your smartphone, removing shiny objects, and turning off the Internet (unless it’s absolutely necessary).
Embrace boredom. We hate boredom, yet we often need it to work well. Being bored can motivate you to work, help generate new ideas, and force you out of inactivity. Practice doing boring things for 30-60 minutes a day. Look at the clock without turning away, read official reports, and, no matter how bored you feel, keep doing what you’re doing. This will greatly improve your attention span and ability to focus.
Work deeply every day. Every skill requires practice to be mastered fully. To be good at working and producing results, you need to do it regularly. Work deeply for 1-2 hours a day without excuses, and do not allow yourself to get distracted. Pick the most important tasks, and execute them no matter how you feel. You will get distracted and fail sometimes, but in the long run, you’ll greatly improve your attention span just by showing up.

Improve Your Attention Span

In the modern world, most people can’t focus. They constantly overindulge in activities that destroy their brain, and find it hard to work on their projects and pursue their dreams.

People often lack attention span because they overstimulate themselves, don’t drink enough water, get little sleep, and rarely work on truly difficult things.

Use these 9 strategies to improve your attention span:

Reduce brain stimulation;
Drink more water;
Get quality sleep;
Read classic literature;
Meditate every morning;
Change your environment;
Do the most important work early;
Journal your thoughts;
Sit down and work.

These things are hard to do at first, but the more often you do them, the more you gain momentum, and the better you focus over time.

If you manage to implement most or all of these strategies, you’ll find it easy to focus, work, outcompete your peers, and get the things you want.

Do good habits, remain disciplined, and work. Wish you luck on your journey, brother.

If you liked this article and found it helpful, make sure to share it on social media and leave a comment below. See you next time.