How to concentrate on studying and memorizing?

9 min readDec 18, 2020

Do you want to know how to concentrate on studying and memorizing? Then, I recommend you to continue reading this article. I write articles every day for the wowessays blog, and I have to research much information. These tips have been put into practice, and I can assure you that they work. In this article, you will find tricks to research and advice to get the most out of your memory.

Why can’t I concentrate on studying

Do you find it difficult to concentrate when studying? What is the reason for the lack of concentration? Below, we will look at the most common causes and reasons:

External distractions: noise, music, voices, movement, the cell phone.
Internal distractions: hunger, thirst, discomfort, sleep, tiredness.
Concerns.
Stress.
Anxiety.
Depression.
Lack of motivation.
Attention problems.
Low ability to concentrate.

Next, we will see how to solve the circumstances that make you unable to concentrate. There are many ways to focus on studying.

Sleep well

The first thing we must take into account the proper functioning of cognitive abilities is rest. To be able to study and perform correctly, you must have slept well. We refer to both sleep time and sleep quality. It is recommended to sleep 8 hours and to have good habits of hygiene of the sleep-like, for example:

Use the bed only for sleeping and not for studying.
To function according to the solar light, that is to say, sleep at night and be awake during the day. Studying at night will affect your circadian rhythm and will affect your attention and concentration.
Follow a relaxing routine before going to bed: eat dinner early, leave the screens.

Sleep is not only essential to study better, but the rest is necessary to memorize. One of the functions of sleep is learning. While you sleep, the concepts explored are consolidated. For this reason, it is counterproductive to study at night and to sleep little and badly. Here you’ll find tips and tricks for fast and deep sleep.

Vitamins to study

It is also essential to follow a healthy and varied diet to be healthy and have optimal brain function. To do this, we must provide the body with all the necessary nutrients and the least unhealthy food possible. The nervous system and cognitive capacities are significantly affected by sugar, including irritability, nervousness, lack of concentration, and mood swings. Therefore, sugar consumption may be one of the reasons why you often say, “I can’t concentrate on studying.”

On the other hand, fatty acids, such as Omega-3 and Omega-6, and vitamins help brain functions’ performance, enhancing attention, concentration, and memory capacity. Vitamin B1 increases the nervous system’s activity, vitamin B5 provides energy, vitamin B6 helps regulate mood, and vitamin B12 helps the central nervous system function properly.

So, what do you take to concentrate? Some tips for concentration about diet are as follows:

I was avoiding drinks with sugar and alcohol.
Regulate the consumption of coffee.
Although they provide energy quickly, saturated fats and foods rich in sugars should be avoided, making it difficult to concentrate.
Take foods rich in magnesium and potassium, such as bananas, vegetables, nuts.
Chocolate (with a high percentage of cocoa) in small quantities also enhances concentration and memory.

Doing physical activity

Physical activity is essential to maintain physical and psychological health. The practice of physical exercise increases neurotrophic factor levels, a protein that improves neuronal plasticity; in this way, it can increase neural connections, which translates into new learning. It also increases the formation of new neurons and the amount of blood they receive, thus improving their functioning.

Physical exercise can even improve functioning and slightly enlarge the hippocampus’s size, one of the brain structures most involved in memory.

Also, the practice of exercise has many benefits at a muscular level and a psychological level, something of great importance if you intend to spend long days studying in the same position.

Find a quiet place

To focus on a particular stimulus, such as a book or notes, it is essential to avoid other more conspicuous things that can distract you. When it comes to studying, the first thing to do is find the right place: a quiet place where distractions are minimal. We recommend a spacious, exact, sunny position, without noise, orderly, with few stimuli, in short, where you can feel comfortable, quiet, and isolated.

It is recommended that it is not the bed or the sofa, that is, that they are not places associated with rest or leisure. It will be easier to concentrate on an area that you associate with work and study.

Managing worries

“If your problem is that you are distracted by thoughts and things that worry you, there are several things you can do to improve your attention:

Scheduling: if it cannot be resolved at this time, you can write down in your plan when you are going to resolve the issue.
Relaxation: to have the mind more clear of thoughts and receptive to study and learn new concepts.
Mindfulness: for all those concerns and unproductive thoughts that have no feasible solution at this time, the most useful thing is to practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is a meditation technique that focuses on a single object and letting go of the thoughts that come. Be aware that a “what am I going to do tomorrow for dinner” or “the last exam was terrible for me” comes to your mind and that these thoughts cannot be resolved and are not helping at all, so you let them go. Kindly stop paying attention to them and focus again on what you are doing here and now. In this article, you will find more information on how to practice mindfulness.

Having everything at hand

To avoid distractions and to not cut off from an activity when you are focused, it is best that you already have everything you need. The good idea is to make a list of the materials you need for that task or day of study (the notes, the folder, the plan, the computer, a book, a notebook, that highlighter, a pen that works, a glass of water). It seems to be less critical than it is since the most challenging part of concentration is maintaining it. If you need something every time you have to get up, you interrupt a moment of attention.

Rest

How to concentrate on studying for an exam? Attention lasts approximately 45 minutes. However, each person is different. The best thing you can do is try and get to know yourself and know what times your concentration is best and how long you can stay focused. It is essential to understand that in study time, quality takes precedence over quantity. Studying is not a passive activity; it is an active activity that requires our part to understand, assimilate, internalize, and integrate new knowledge.

For all this, you should take breaks when you notice that you are not performing as well as possible. Forcing yourself will only increase fatigue, decreasing the functioning of concentration and memory.

Be realistic and accept

Sometimes the lack of concentration or poor performance in the study is due to the poor organization during the course and excessive pressure during the last weeks or days. It is also essential for the concentration’s functioning to know how to be realistic and understand what the memory can do and what it is not. You can’t work miracles. You can’t memorize manuals in hours; you can’t study a course in an afternoon. If this is your case, don’t worry. Let the experience help you organize yourself better and start looking in advance next time.

Use all your senses

The memory works better if different channels capture the information. Therefore, it is interesting that you not only read but also listen to the explanation. Thus, we exercise various types of memory.

The more channels, the better. It is essential to attend classes or conferences, watch explanatory videos, documentaries, news on the subject. You can, for example, speak out loud, record yourself and listen to yourself, etc.

Help processing

The more you work with this information, the easier it will be to retain it in your memory. Therefore, if you want to memorize and concentrate better by studying, you can:

Read the information.
Summarize it.
Ask yourself questions about it.
Look for the answers.
Explain the topic to someone else.

Another trick to concentrate on studying and memorizing better involves different brain functions and areas by doing other actions. Thinking activates different areas than talking, writing, or moving. Therefore, the more stories you do with this information, the more ways you will be processing it and making it easier to consolidate in your memory.

Making outlines

Outlining is another of the best techniques to study better. A beneficial approach is an outline, a visual method to encourage learning to memorize key concepts and their relationships. Other images are added, and other essential ideas are developed that allow us to understand the overall subject better. You can make a collage, do it by hand or digitally, and you can use images, graphics, shapes…, anything that helps you connect and work with the information. In this way, we are working on visual memory. Here you can see How to have a photographic memory.

Involve the emotions

It makes sense that what we remember most is what has generated an emotional impact on us since, in this way, the brain knows that it is the essential information and that it must preserve it. The learnings that have a more personal connotation, the events that impact our emotions are the ones we remember best. You can use this trick to study and memorize better by relating the information to your own experiences and get emotionally involved in what you are looking.

Simulate the context

The brain is a detector of changes in the environment. Depending on the stimuli it perceives in the background, it responds in one way or another. Therefore, the incentives that remind us of a traumatic event trigger an anxiety response. The stimuli that remind us of a substance trigger the need for consumption in an addicted person.

Another method to focus on studying is to take advantage of the context. That is to say, to simulate that it is the moment of the exam and to study thus. For example, you can look for a similar place, in an equal time, in a similar environment, having had the same thing (coffee, tea, nothing.), etc. This way, when it is the day of the exam, your brain will connect better with the study moment, and it will be easier to recover the memorized information.

Use mnemonic rules

You are probably wondering what is the best way to study and memorize, although it is true that the most effective technique will always be the one that requires effort and constancy. If you are in an emergency and need to learn something from one day to the next, we offer you the following tricks to memorize faster:

Make a list of the keywords that come up in the text.
If you must memorize words or data, you can use mnemonic rules; these are short and simple sentences that can help you access a memory. For example, if you have to remember the provinces or capitals of an area, try joining the initials together to form a word.
If what you have to memorize are objects, you can create a story between them, the more unlikely, the better.

Knowing how to stop

“I need to study, and I can’t concentrate. “What can you do to concentrate on studying for many hours?” Do you identify with these phrases? Perhaps what you need is to learn to stop? Concentration, attention, and memory are cognitive abilities that train and improve over time. To achieve these improvements, the important thing is to be constant and responsible. Being responsible also means taking care of yourself and resting, disconnecting, enjoying social relationships, physical activity in the open air, quality time with your family, hobbies.

It is important not to lose your bearings, especially when studying under the pressure of competitive examinations or other very demanding exams. As we have seen initially, it is essential to learn to be healthy and in balance. Therefore, one must balance study with the other crucial areas of life.