10 Simple Methods to Restart Your Brain

Have you ever been in a room and forgotten why you went there? Or to get out of a meeting and realize that you have no idea what was said because you were with your mind completely elsewhere? Sure, it's frustrating, but it's pretty normal.

Scientists say that the brain is ready to lose its focus and get lost at any moment, taking advantage of any opportunity. Evidence shows that areas of the brain responsible for "unthinking thoughts" (dreaming with open eyes, lost in thought) are almost permanently active when the brain is at rest or performing a task that does not require concentration.

Fortunately, experts say that it is possible to channel all that intellectual energy, filter everything that distracts you, and be able to accomplish any task by improving your ability to concentrate. Here are 10 ways to regain your intellectual acuity when you feel your mind begin to lose focus when you need it.

 At work

If you do not love with passion everything related to your work, it is natural to fall into dreaming from time to time. A study of 124 people found that they dreamed with their eyes open about 30% of the time, even during important tasks, which led to many hours of lost productivity.

Boredom, fatigue, and stress are factors that make your mind wander aimlessly. And while women are dreaming as much as men, they tend to worry and become anxious when they have such episodes of loss of concentration.

You don't have to worry: many times when you slip into unrelated thoughts about what you're doing, it's just the brain's way of taking a necessary break, even if sometimes the moments don't go down well. Here's what you can do:

Organize Yourself

If you have a lot of work to do, decide which one to start with and remove any other projects from your desktop or computer screen. Get rid of memos, emails, and anything else that reminds you that you're behind work.

Don't decorate and over-personalize your office. Even family photos can be a pretext for your mind to fly to other things because those are the people you care about the most.

Participate

If you dream with your eyes open during the meetings, challenge yourself by thinking about questions to ask and actively joining the discussion.

Change the scenery

When you feel like you're starting to lose focus, get up from your desk and take a walk outside or to the dining room to take a break from your brain. That way, your mind will only associate the office with work, not slipping into dreaming.

Experts say that if we do not take regular breaks, especially when we are not crazy about our job, our brain will take breaks on its own initiative.

In the car

We are more likely to get lost in thoughts during activities that we can do automatically. If the car in front puts a sudden brake, your reaction speed may not be high enough to prevent an accident. Here are two tricks to help you avoid this:

Tie a lace on the steering wheel

When you spend time in the car thinking about the same things every day (doing your work plan for the day or thinking about what to cook for dinner or what the kids did at school) your brain starts to associate the car with a lack of concentration. . A visual reminder such as a colorful lace tied to the steering wheel or a new sticker on board can get you out of your dangerous daydream.

Play a game

Games with numbers and geographical names are perfect for car trips with children for a very good reason: games use objects that you should pay attention to when driving. Try to guess what the letters on the license plates of the cars in front of you mean or you find funny meanings for them.

When you read

Do you happen to reread the same page from your novel? It's not your memory's fault. "Absent reading" is a very common phenomenon and it takes considerable effort to control it. Researchers have found that people actually lose their mind about 20% of their time reading. Their eyes follow the lines, but they don't think about what they are reading.

Take a break

Look up from the book from time to time to think about what you read; recapitulate in mind the stories of the book or analyze the motivations of a character, for example. Psychologists and neurologists say that these breaks in which we put our brains to work to understand and analyze what we have read help us to improve not only our ability to concentrate but also our ability to understand.

Go back

If you have read a few paragraphs and do not know what is written in them, read them again, but from the bottom up: start with the last read and go up. Experts say that reorganizing small packets of information can sometimes improve the amount absorbed by the brain. 

Comments

If it is your book, you can make small notes on the edges with a pencil or you can mark passages that seem significant or memorable. This will help you increase your ability to concentrate and your ability to understand.

If you have a personal problem

People who say they are unhappy, usually because of a difficult problem, get lost much deeper in their thoughts while performing a task than those who do not have personal problems. Feelings aroused by your personal situation limit your ability to focus on anything else.

When you are upset you will spend most of your time thinking only about that problem, but experts say that this kind of endless pedaling on the same thing is actually inefficient and unproductive.

Pour out your bitterness

Talk about your worries with a friend or relative, either face to face or on the phone, to clear your brain. 

Make a list of ways you can approach the problem to solve it and then… see your life! "Putting a plan on paper helps you get the problem in the background and it's halfway done, so you can focus on other things," says Eric Klinger, a psychologist.

Meditate

Recent research has shown that meditation not only relieves stress, as it is known but allows you to remove from your mind anything that distracts you from the things you have to do.

Experts studied how the subjects of the study controlled their attention before and after learning conscious meditation (30 minutes a day, study participants sat quietly, focusing only on their own breathing; when they felt the mind tended to "escape" they gently redirected their thoughts back to breathing).

After 8 weeks, all study participants showed a marked improvement in the ability to stay focused on a task as well as a faster recovery of concentration after interruptions. Meditation trains the brain to direct its attention where you want it and to keep it focused where you want it.