How I Trained Myself To Focus Long Periods Of Time (Even When I Dont Want To)

when i was in eighth grade seven years ago i was preparing for the high school entrance exam i wanted to score as high as possible so that i could get into my dream high school but the problem was i could only concentrate five minutes literally after five minutes my mind was everywhere i was daydreaming throwing something looking out of the window and wasn't really listening the teacher the exam that i was gonna take lasted i think about 90 minutes 120 minutes i don't really remember but in order to study full day i needed to improve my concentration by trying different tactics methods and tricks i train my concentration from five minutes to multiple hours if you have a short focus and if you are struggling with concentrating on a task for a long period of time then this video is for you before trying to improve your focus i want to give a disclaimer this is a method that i use for myself it worked for me i figured out this method when i was 14 and i'm still using these tricks and tips when i see my focus is not really lasting so it worked for me but it might not work for you the recommendation that i can give is you know try and see what are first for you so the step one will be figuring out which type you are when i was talking to my friends i realized that there are two types of people when it comes to concentration this is not science based or anything this is just from my observations so take it as a grain of salt so the first type is short and deep one so the first group of people who basically can use pomodoro method if you don't know about pomodoro method it's basically a study method where you study 25 minutes and then take five minutes of break and you repeat the cycle and after four times you take 15 minutes of break and you repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat if you tried polar method and if you see that this method works for you then you're probably in group one so if you are able to concentrate for a short period of time and after five minutes of break if you don't have any difficulties to come back to your desk and study once again you're probably in this group and the second group is long focus but limited time type of group if it makes sense so these are the people who can study for a longer period of time but having difficulties with coming back to your desk so you can study like for an hour or maybe hour and a half but after you take a break even like for five minutes it turns into 10 minutes 20 minutes 30 minutes and maybe a whole day you take a rest if you're this type maybe you're in group two maybe you're saying duty i cannot even concentrate for 25 minutes how the heck am i supposed to find whether i belong to group 1 or group 2. if you cannot concentrate 25 minutes maybe it's not about your focus but maybe there are too many distractions around you i'm gonna talk about how to solve them after solving all these distractions you can figure out which one you belong to but for generally speaking if you can concentrate more than 25 minutes when you reflect back on your study skills or study patterns you probably already know which group you belong i belong to the second group so i just cannot come back to my desk once again when i take a break so pomodoro method i always hated that it works for some people but it does not work for me it is just not for me i just cannot follow a structure 25 5 25 5 15 type of study schedule it is just too boring for me so i am group two knowing your type is important because on step two we want to figure out which type you want to become you can change basically your type maybe you have a bit more tendency to either of these groups but of course you can change this focus type in my experience in my friend's experience there is no such thing as group one is better than group two or something it totally depends on your goal do you want to spread your study time to entire day for example from monday to friday you study all day long and only thing you do is studying but you get a solid study session or do you want to like study every day but have a pretty intense studying session in the morning and then have the rest of the day for yourself it totally depends on that person and it totally depends how you want to study but for me personally i don't want to study all day long even if i can take like breaks here and there i just don't want to spread my study sessions all day long because i have so many things other than studying that i want to do like youtube um going to the gym spending time with family friends whatever so i wanted to make my focus so packed and so intense in the morning so that i don't need to do any studying anymore in the evening but for some people they really don't like intense studying sessions like four-hour blocks or three-hour vlogs and they say like i feel like burnout so i want to spread my study session the whole day so that i can have a bit of resting there here and there lunch time and study again but it doesn't work for me in order to figure out which type you belong of course you need to calculate your focus in the first place so the step three will be calculating your focus we need to understand your starting point before talking about tips and tricks so now stop the video and sit at your desk and try to concentrate on something it can be studying it can be work or it can be whatever you want to focus when you get distracted take a pen and paper and write down how many minutes or maybe hours you could concentrate and also write the reason why you got distracted and do this calculating multiple times maybe give yourself a week and each day each time when you're trying to study or work write down minutes and the reason why you got distracted and do it for a week so the step four will be analyze the reason after a week you will have a solid data of why you're getting distracted when you're studying or working and now we're going to analyze the reason why you're getting distracted first thing first take the average of your concentration so that we know how many minutes you can actually concentrate without getting distracted it can be even 5 minutes 10 minutes 30 minutes it totally depends on you you don't need to be ashamed of your short amount of focus because everybody starts from a different point and it's totally fine so just calculate your average focus time and note it somewhere and also when it comes to distractions figure out why you are getting distracted if you can see a pattern reason that is repeatedly occurring mark it up and write it down while you are getting distracted sleep nutrition environment your phone or your mood or the specific time of the day can be a great reason by giving yourself honest feedback you will be more conscious the next time you're trying to study or work or try to concentrate on something use the pareto principle to train your focus observe the conditions and observe the things that you did differently on days you're productive versus you're unprodu