All the concentration exercises have their own uniqueness: their simplicity. There is no need to think out anything complicated if you can focus on something single and simple, and increase your level like that.
Inspiring Word
Choose one inspiring word and think about it, repeat it in your mind during five minutes.
Word Quantity
Take a book or a magazine and count word quantity in one of the paragraphs. Count them again in order to make sure you were not mistaken previously. Start form a single paragraph, and after you get used to the method, move to counting two paragraphs.
Then pass to counting words on the whole page. Make sure to complete the count with your mind and eyes only, do not point every word with your finger. This is one of the most easy but effective exercises to improve concentration.
Countdown
Subtract one number after another from 1000. If that is too easy for you, subtract 2, 7, 9, any bigger number.
Thoughts Suppression
Try to suppress your thoughts during 5 minutes. That is quite a complicated task, but if to practice regularly, you’ll be able to do that. Start from one minute and increase time gradually.
Subject View
Take a fruit like an apple, an orange or a banana, and look onto it from all sides by concentrating all your attention. Try holding it stably. Do this during a minute, then gradually increase the timeline to five. Change hands, too.
No Words
Take a small thing like a spoon, a fork, a cup or a glass. Now concentrate on it by watching onto it from all sides without verbalization (this means without words in your mind). Just concentrate on looking onto the object without thinking about it.
No Movement
Take a seat on a comfortable chair and see how long you can stay on one place. This may seem to be easy, but only until you try. All that you need to do is to focus your attention on a seat. Make sure you do not make any unwanted muscle moves. With practice, you’ll be able to sit like that for 15 minutes.
Concentration from the Inside
This exercise will help you concentrate from the inside. Start from relaxing your muscles slightly. Follow the rhythm of your heartbeat. Imagine blood flowing through your vessels and pay attention to everything else.
Deep Breathing
Sit on a chair vertically, keep your back high and straight. Now make a deep-deep breath while pushing on a right nostril with your finger. Breath calmly, count to ten, and then push the air out. Repeat this exercise with another nostril. Repeat 20 times per day.
Sounds
The following exercise is about focusing on sounds. You are surrounded by many of them in regular life. Try concentrating on a certain sound live voice or rustle. Then switch to another one intentionally (to a bird’s singing, for instance).
Then switch to the next one, a sound of car traffic, for example. Go on switching between sounds after focusing on a single one during a minute.
This exercise can be made visual, by concentrating your attention on a person or a thing making sound.
Drawing and Coloring
Drawing and coloring is an excellent activity to make your mind relax and stimulate creativity. It improves concentration as well.
Small Victories
This exercise is good because it lets you use routine tasks to train concentration. Choose a task, for instance, reading the learning material, writing an essay, reading a book chapter. Then set up a timer. 5 to 10 minutes fit here the best. During that period of time, nothing except of you and your task exists for you in this world. Switch your phone off and lock the door. Try leading the exercise to 90-minute timer. If you practice regularly, you'll be able to get that time in a month.
Mirror Motivation
The most useful form of concentration is the eye contact with another person and perception of the deeper connection. Stand before a mirror and stick two stickers on the eye level. Imagine them to be eyes of your collocutor. All your thoughts have to be concentrated on holding your head with no moves and avoiding other thoughts. Breathe deeply. Exercise time: five minutes.
Bonus: Concentration Apps for Smartphone
Brain Focus Productivity Timer
This is a freeware app for Android, created for time management. It allows setting time you want to devote to work, and then lets you make a planned break. The idea was taken from Pomodoro technique, based on the timing of 25 working minutes and 5 minutes of rest. This process is repeated again and again.
This way, you’ll be much more productive than in case you made yourself work for hours with no breaks. Brain Focus is easy to use, and it can show your performance level.
(OFFTIME)
This is another free app for Android. Offtime lets you switch off the outer world while not missing anything urgent. You can block distracting factors like apps, calls and messages, but you can enlist those who will be able to get in contact with you in any case to a white list of this application.
It can answer messages instead of you automatically, too. Offtime provides you with information about how you use your smartphone, hours spent daily, and apps taking the most part of your time.
Forest
A paid app for iOS and Android. It is known to be among the most popular applications.
Increase your productivity by placing virtual trees in “Forest”. Open the app and plant a tree every time you want to concentrate on a certain task. If you don’t make breaks for 30 minutes, you’ll see how it grows. This is how you create the whole forest. If you fail, the tree dies.
NOISLI
That is a free online platform. Use Noisli to create a perfect environment for yourself. That is an application with white noise that can be used to combine different natural sounds like train wheels or bonfire.
Noisli fits those who can’t work with music but still want to have any noise on the background.
