How To Improve Your Attention Span General

A big part of staying in employment is to stay attentive: you’ve got to keep your mind involved on a task for long periods of time without deviating from that task. For anyone, that can be a problem. However, if you’ve ever been diagnosed with ADHD or other similar disorders, keeping your attention on something without a little bit of help can be downright impossible. This can have serious consequences on your professional life.

In order to help you improve your attention span, Building Better Opportunities have put together this short knowledge hub article. We are a charity providing welfare advice in Staffordshire, as well as employment support in Staffordshire’s local area.

This article was designed to help you improve your attention span without medication. However, if you believe that you do have ADHD or other similar disorder, you should consider visiting your doctor. These conditions are quite serious if left untreated, and you may find better results by consulting with a medical professional.

3 Simple Ways to Improve Your Attention Span

Focus on single tasks

Our first piece of advice is also the most practical. In order to make any large task feel more accomplishable, all you need to do is to break it down into smaller parts. By doing this, you’re tricking your brain into thinking that a task is much easier and quicker to do than it might actually be.

Attentive Listening

Our next piece of advice is a technique known as active listening. Active listening is where you make a deliberate effort to take in everything that is being said. You can do this by the following:

  • Listen to the other person in the conversation without interrupting them.
  • Keep your body language still and controlled
  • Practice listening to something for a long period of time. This can be an album or a podcast, depending on your preference. The idea is that you’re practicing listening.

By doing this, you’ll slowly learn how to improve your listening skills, and thus your ability to concentrate will improve, too.

Take a Break

Our final piece of advice is to make sure that you schedule regular breaks during your work day. Taking a break may sound counter intuitive to improving your concentration; however, if you think of mental exhaustion like physical exhaustion it makes perfect sense. You wouldn’t keep running when you’re tired, would you? So why do you continue to work with a similar level of mental exhaustion?

Depending on your company, your boss and your level of need, these can be anything from a quick trip to the bathroom to clear your head to a full ten minutes off.

Contact Building Better Opportunities Today

Building Better Opportunities is a charity offering support and welfare advice in Stafford, Stoke-On-Trent, and the wide Staffordshire area. We offer help with welfare benefits, job searches and work placements, help developing employability skills, as well as mental health wellbeing advice and support.

For more advice, contact Building Better Opportunities today.