Learn How to Increase Concentration and Focus while Studying and Working [Scientific Tips]

Concentration, or sustained attention, on a task, depends on 5 very important psychological factors. IF you only want a few quick lifestyle hacks to improve concentration and focus, jump to point 5.

Notice how all of these factors are within your control. Your concentration while studying (by yourself and during lectures) or working depends on how you manipulate these factors to make them favorable. But how do these factors become favorable? Follow the psychological context of learning and use the recommendations made in each section below. This article primarily discusses how to concentrate on academic content but you can apply the insights to improve concentration at work.

Concentration is the ability to purposefully sustain and guide one’s attention to learn, comprehend, observe, monitor, and self-reflect in a given situation. Effective concentration suppresses distractions within our conscious and unconscious awareness. It is a part of our executive functioning. Concentrating involves narrow, razor-sharp focus as well as a broad, global focus. The goal of increasing concentration is to modify behavior, improve memory, and improve learning.

Many of us don’t get to choose exactly what we have to concentrate on. We find it hard to concentrate if we dislike the content. But sometimes, we love what we are studying and we feel a strong desire to learn. This desire may come from pure love, curiosity, fascination, personal relevance, or external rewards like marks, ego-boost, praises, and desirable outcomes like professional independence, good college, better job prospects, respect in society, avoiding shame, etc.

A burning desire emerging from within you is called intrinsic motivation. That motivation stems from the joy of learning what you love, the love of knowledge, the satisfaction of progressing, etc. Intrinsic motivation depends on your values & wishes. On the other hand, extrinsic motivation stems from external rewards like marks, praise, ego-boost, and outcomes like social respect.

Intrinsic motivation often wins in maintaining increased levels of concentration because your brain is ready to concentrate for its own sake. You increase focus because you want to focus. External rewards can also be powerful but they may change and once your attitude towards the reward changes, extrinsic motivation crumples. This is called “motivational crowding-out” – if you are intrinsically motivated to study, seeking external rewards can actually interfere with and disrupt your motivation to study.

What if there is no intrinsic motivation and no desirable external reward? This is the point where most people fail to concentrate and then procrastinate. When you have to study things that you are not motivated to study, it creates negative emotions. To avoid those negative emotions, people procrastinate and do something that they are intrinsically motivated to do because it is satisfying.

High motivational intensity such as a deep-seated desire narrows attention (razor-sharp), and low motivational intensity such as simple liking and pleasantness broadens attention (big picture) according to the motivational dimension model of affect. Since both forms of attention are important for learning, you can shuffle between topics you are excited by and just barely like. You may also choose the material that needs a broad focus when you don’t feel too motivated and material that needs a narrow focus when you are highly motivated.

How do you increase your concentration while studying then? Start by finding intrinsic motivation. Whether your concentration power is good or bad, intrinsic motivation will improve it.

There is no study material that is impossible to fall in love with, it’s your perspective, attitude, and desire that enables or disables it. The goal of these tips is to create a relationship between you and your study material.

Distraction is made up of everything that pulls your attention away from what you need to focus on. Stimulation is everything that arouses your brain to deliberately direct attention toward your thoughts and study material. There is a reason why a balance of stimulation & distraction is required to improve concentration while studying. We have two types of attention – endogenous & exogenous. Endogenous attention is goal-driven, deliberate, and can convert into concentration. Exogenous attention is stimuli-driven (whatever attracts you), automatic, and can convert into both – concentration (if it is useful to you) or distraction (if it is unrelated to your task). When you plan to study a graph, you mostly employ endogenous attention. When you lose focus because of a notification on your phone and start scrolling through Instagram, you are at the mercy of exogenous attention. High concentration study sessions are possible when we limit exogenous attention and maximize endogenous attention.

Attention is occupied while studying, ideally. When it isn’t occupied, exogenous attention has the opportunity to break your focus. Some people can concentrate without distractions while studying. Some need a small level of distraction while studying. Background music can occupy some portion of your attention and according to research, it does help people concentrate better. Generally, music with lyrics is a bad idea because lyrics & human voices capture our exogenous attention. Many can increase concentration while reading and writing, even calculations, by listening to background music or noise. Others require total silence. Some can only focus for a few minutes and then require a conversational or YouTube break. Many would prefer non-zero distraction and non-infinite stimulation which occupies enough of your attention to allow the endogenous attention to focus on studies and work. Everyone’s capacity to concentrate is different because their need for stimulation/arousal & vulnerability to distraction is different.

The Cognitive Load & Construal Level theory explains when we perform at our best. Cognitive load is the total effort needed because of your environment, your study material (or task at hand), and your mental state. Construal level describes how deeply you process your work. Deeper processing means low construal and higher load. More mental effort leads to more cognitive load and that occupies your endogenous attention. Since people have different thresholds for stimulation and vulnerabilities to distraction, how much cognitive load you have is important to improve concentration.

Distractions from within the study/work material (noticing some important bit of information) also use exogenous attention but those distractions are useful as they help you connect the dots and link related/highlighted concepts while learning. Stimulation/Arousal (or the lack thereof) emerges from enthusiasm, lethargy, exciting content, boring presentation, dull room lighting, background chit-chat, attending to other less important work, etc. All of these factors affect how your attention is occupied.

When you are fully involved and the study task is slightly challenging and beyond your current skill level, you may experience the flow state which has the highest form of concentration. It’s a state of deep engagement with your work with continuous feedback between your work and your brain which makes you one with the task. The flow state is known to be a highly productive focused state. Experience the flow state by meeting these background conditions: Intrinsic motivation, a sense of being challenged by the task, working at your limit, and a sense of achieving something. Read more about it here.

Just like distractions, your beliefs and attitudes can break your concentration. People have core beliefs such as I’m not smart enough, This is too much to study, I’ll never finish this in such little time, I don’t know how to start, I cannot focus without _____, If I study a lot I will change who I am, etc. These beliefs open the door for procrastination and even self-sabotage. Some of these beliefs are rigid, and we tend to affirm them because they are a part of who we are. Sometimes, these beliefs come from only a small portion of your real experiences, usually, the negative experiences. To counter those negative experiences, we engage in mood-improving distractions that make us feel good.

If you believe that you cannot study for long hours, you can direct yourself to study for only 15 minutes. Or instead of feeling overwhelmed by the entire workload, pick a tiny load, and study it thoroughly. The smaller the task gets, the more manageable it feels. And that is an easy way to overcome low concentration and negative beliefs about your ability to learn. Read more about managing emotions here and here.

The latitude of acceptance is a mental filter that accepts self-thoughts based on how easy it is to believe them. If you hold strong beliefs like “I am bad at numbers,” it will be hard to modify that belief into “I am good at numbers.” Instead, modify a self-belief just enough so you can accept it (ex: I am bad at numbers but can try and learn this short routine). Small positive changes can widen the holes in that filter and allow bigger changes in beliefs. These beliefs would determine your attitude, commitment, and confidence in focusing.

Breaking a task into its smallest sensible parts (chunking) is a good way to have short bursts of concentration, especially if your baseline concentration is poor. Taking breaks between study sessions and revising previous learning is another useful technique (spaced repetition). Both of these techniques reduce the actual & perceived burden of intense study sessions. Read more about these techniques here.

Before we even begin to concentrate and sustain our attention, we have to make a decision on what to focus on. Not deciding what to begin with is a source of conflict and mental stress. To make things worse, you cannot begin with everything even if it is equally important. One of the hardest skills is to decide where to begin. After you know your options, choosing one is a subjective choice. Choosing a topic that is related to your previous study session is a good starting point. If your only option is to study new concepts or explore a new work task, you can begin with a simple overview of a topic/task and incrementally dive in deeper – layer by layer.

Shuffling between a bird’s eye view and quick facts can be helpful. The facts and contexts strengthen each other – our memory improves. Some information acts as an anchor and helps you concentrate on a small specific area. New concepts that relate to existing anchors are less likely to become distractions. Knowledge builds bit by bit and it’s important to limit your focus to a balance of depth & breadth. That is, take a topic, draw a circle around it, learn a few things within that circle, learn things that are on its border, then repeat this for a new topic, and once in a while, do an overview of how multiple circles merge into each other. This engages a narrow, detailed form of attention as well as a global, abstract form of attention. Both narrow and broad attention is a part of “attentional control” which is a fancy term for concentration.

Attention is an “executive function” which means it’s a fundamental cognitive process necessary to control behavior and thinking (like studying & focusing).

Other important executive functions underlying increased concentration are cognitive inhibition (ignoring irrelevant information & thinking), inhibitory control (stopping the impulse to procrastinate & ignoring distractions), cognitive flexibility (automatic & deliberate shifting of attention between different important tasks & concepts), and self-regulation (managing your behavior, thoughts, and emotions). Together, these executive functions define our concentration level. A healthy brain and body keep our executive functions tip-top. Because these involve automatic and deliberate brain functions, you can increase your capacity to concentrate by practicing and improving mental and physical health.

Contrary to popular belief, short distractions as well as switching tasks and paying attention to a small variety of information is good for maintaining focus for a long time. When we choose just one type of task and monotonously focus on it for a while, we get habituated (unresponsive) and attention to details (and changes) worsens. To counter this habituation, sporadically attend to something else for a short duration. These breaks refresh our executive functioning to perform at its peak.

Difficulty in concentrating and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are often linked together because both have a common feature – Executive Dysfunction. Those with ADHD demonstrate what looks like surplus attention as it takes a lot to occupy endogenous attention. In some cases, medicines in the category of stimulants help.

Address the 5 factors in this article to improve your concentration power while working and studying. You can also apply these to concentrate better on a hobby. Some of these will be useful while talking and listening too. Implement the tips based on your current context and needs. And remember – concentration is a skill, not a set limit.

Was this useful?

Average rating 5 / 5. Vote count: 1

We are sorry that this post was not useful for you!

Let us improve this post!

Tell us how we can improve this post?

Hey! Thank you for reading; hope you enjoyed the article. I run Cognition Today to paint a holistic picture of psychology. My content here is referenced in Forbes, CNET, Entrepreneur, Lifehacker, a few books, academic courses, and research papers.

I’m an applied psychologist from Bangalore, India. Love sci-fi, horror media; Love rock, metal, synthwave, and pop music; can’t whistle; can play the guitar.

Help me run this site with a donation :)