Tips To Improve Memory And Concentration

A few days ago I was trying to remember a recipe I had learned on one of my travels, but I realized that I had already forgotten most of the ingredients. My memory, and probably my concentration as well, as I was feeling a little stressed, prevented me from preparing it.

These small slips can often happen to us due to the stress we are subjected to every day. Precisely for this reason, exercising memory and concentration becomes important for the realization of all daily activities.

In this article we want to give you some tips that can help you improve and enhance these two skills of the mind, fundamental in the life of all of us.

Tips to improve memory

The memory is a key capability of our mind. We need it to organize our life and to remember important experiences and events. It is also one of the skills we need to pay more attention to, as it can get worse over time. In fact, as we grow older, our memory requires a greater effort of concentration to function properly. Here are some tips that can help you train and enhance your memory capacity:

1. Get adequate sleep and rest. Very often we believe that even if we sleep less hours than we should, our brains will continue to perform at 100%. But this is a misconception: it is advisable to sleep at least 7 hours a day if we want the brain to process information correctly and improve our long-term memory.
2. Exercise. According to the University of Pittsburg, sport helps relieve tension and improve spatial memory.

1. Eat some chocolate. Here is a pleasure that is also an ally of memory and learning. According to the Spanish magazine Muy Interesante , which deals with popular science, one of the components of cocoa promotes cognitive function, as a study carried out in 2013 found.
2. Associate a concept with an image. In addition to being a piece of advice, this is one of the main exercises that we can perform every day, especially if we are in a period of study and exams. When we associate a concept with a concrete image that describes it, our memory more easily retains the information we want to process.
3. Take mental photographs. Following the same principle as in the previous point, you can practice taking “mental pictures” of what you see and want to remember. This applies to almost any memory you want to keep: you can go back to it whenever you want and analyze the details.

Tips to improve concentration

Sometimes we have memory problems because our concentration level at that moment is too low. Being focused is an almost essential requirement if we want to have positive results in what we are doing. To be able to improve your concentration level and do your job in the best way, we invite you to follow the following tips.

1. Go for walks with the sole purpose of walking. When we do, we feel freer, and this exercise gives us a time to reflect in solitude. Walking, observing the landscape and forgetting our worries for a while relaxes us. And this relaxation is essential to increase concentration.
2. Choose an elaborate font. This advice is especially true for those who need to focus on a written text. It is proven that the font we choose for the texts to read or study affects the retention of the content. If we make the task of processing writing more difficult for the brain, it will remain more focused.

1. Sit down for a few minutes and relax. Just like walking, sitting for about ten minutes will help you take your worries away. Very often we have a lot of thoughts that prevent us from focusing on what is really important, and this exercise is a great help in clearing up ideas and releasing stress.
2. Prepare what we need and look for the right place. Sometimes it happens that we have so many things to think about at the same time that we can’t focus on any of them. Instead, it is much better to focus on just one activity at a time, prepare what we need to make it happen, and look for the most appropriate place to do it.
3. Set short-term goals. Remember that near-utopian goals can stress you out, so it’s much better to set intermediate goals that you feel you can accomplish. You will see that in this way the concentration you put into what you are doing will improve, because you will notice that you are getting closer to the established goal.