Improve Your Memory And Concentration

A few days ago I tried to cook a recipe that I learned on one of my trips. As I was doing this, I realized that I had forgotten some of the ingredients. My memory, or perhaps my concentration – I have had it quite stressful – had let me down.

Small things like these can happen quite often due to the stressful circumstances we are exposed to on a daily basis. This is why it is important to improve your memory and train your concentration to develop yourself every day.

In this article, we will give you some advice on how you can improve and maximize these mental processes.

Memory is a basic mental process that we use to organize ourselves and remember important events and experiences. But it is also one of the processes we should pay the most attention to, because it is affected by the ravages of time. The older we get, the more our memory will need help to function properly. Below we provide some tips for training and improving your memory:

• Get enough sleep and rest: we often believe that we can sleep less than we need, and that our brains will still function 100%. But this is not true. It is recommended to sleep at least seven hours each night so that your brain can process information properly and improve your long-term memory.
• Exercise: According to studies from the University of Pittsburgh , exercising releases tension and can improve spatial memory.

• Eat chocolate: it is good for treating both memory and learning. According to the journal Very Interesting , a component of cocoa promotes cognitive function, based on a 2013 study.

• Associate concepts with pictures: more than just a piece of advice, this is a key exercise that you should practice daily, especially if you are in a phase where you are writing many tests. When you associate a definition with a concrete image, your memory will hold the information better.
• Take mental photographs: in line with the previous point, take mental photos of what you see and what you want to remember to improve your memory. This works for almost any memory you want to keep. This way, you can go back to it often and see the details of the image.

Our memory often fails us because our concentration level was too low. Staying focused is an important requirement for productivity in virtually all tasks. In order for you to be able to improve your concentration level and perform your job more efficiently, we will share some advice here:

• Take a walk, for the sole purpose of walking: when you do this, you will free your mind and find time for yourself. It is relaxing to go and look at the surroundings, without any specific goal while forgetting your clouds of worry for a while. This type of relaxation will help you get better concentration.
• Write in complicated fonts: this advice is more aimed at people who need to concentrate on something written. It has been demonstrated that the font you use to read or study can influence your retention of content. The harder it is for your brain to process the font, the more concentration you will put on it.

• Sit down for a few minutes to ease your burden: just like walking, ten minutes of sitting can alleviate your anxiety. Most of the time we have so many clouds of anxiety that they prevent us from concentrating on what is really important. This exercise is effective in organizing your ideas and releasing stress.

• Prepare what you need for your job and find a suitable place to do it. You may have so many things to concentrate on at the same time that you can not concentrate on any of them. It is good to focus only on one activity, prepare what you need for it and find a place that promotes its execution.
• Set short-term goals: Goals that are too idealistic can be overwhelming, which is why you should set goals that you feel you are capable of achieving. If you do this, you will see that your concentration improves as you see yourself getting closer to your goals.