Getting your fitness and health in shape is a process of completing tasks at the right time. We need know when to work out, when to eat nutritious meals, when to take care of our mental health, and so on. It’s a management process, something that doesn’t happen on its own, but certainly something that can totally enrich your life to the point where the invested effort is paid back over and over and over again.

Yet, to complete any task well, we must focus on it. It’s hard to focus, however, when you feel scatterbrained and unable to truly achieve your potential. Does this mean you need to feel 100% sharp every day? Of course not, but it can be healthy to figure out how to improve your cognitive functioning and mental awareness while hoping to get fit and healthy, even if that’s only to make sure you’re committing to the best weightlifting form, or that you keep up on your healthy meal planning rather than ordering takeout.

But how can you achieve this, especially if you have a busy career and life?

Meditation and Sleep

While some opt for a liquid kratom shot or brain games to help them focus well, it’s also important to get enough sleep. If you don’t, your focus will be hard to guarantee each day. It’s also a great idea to meditate if you can, as focusing on your breathing in and out for ten minutes a day, increasingly slowly as time goes on, can be tremendously helpful in training the mind to focus on one thing and one thing only, despite auditory stimuli.

Training Your Focus

You can train focus skills, over time. For instance, it’s a good idea to sit down and commit to a task for a certain amount of time. You may say, “Right now, I plan to read for thirty minutes, and will only get up if I need a bathroom break or a glass of water.” Then, you do it. That’s thirty minutes you will have spent at one task, without multitasking, and you will have been invested in that approach. Then, over time, maybe you could increase that time, or go for whole workouts without needing music to get through it, and more. It’s a slow process, but very rewarding.

Eliminate Distractions

You’d be surprised by how smartphones and internet access can mess up focus. Apps, for instance, have become technically proficient at grabbing our attention and holding onto it for as long as possible, which leaves us feeling out of sorts, and often more tired than we need to be. Have you ever started scrolling through Tik Tok or Instagram and then suddenly 2 hours has passed? It’s like time travel.

Eliminating distractions may mean getting your phone away from you while trying to commit to a focus-building activity, or limiting social media apps on your phone during the day, or even taking extreme measures, like only using an older flip phone with no app access (yikes, but sometimes extreme measures are needed!). When you eliminate distractions, you can build your focus through other means.