How to Improve Your Focus in the Morning

Take Charge of Your Mornings & Make More of Your Days

If there’s any time of the day that many people struggle to maintain focus and direction, it’s first thing in the morning.

Even with a solid skincare routine  or a regular morning detox routine  it may not be enough to help promote good focus and mental health throughout the day.

If you can’t maintain focus in the morning, you’ll have a much harder time preparing yourself mentally to face the day – especially if you have any tedious or stressful tasks ahead of you.

With that in mind, we want to give you some tips that you can use on how to improve focus in the morning, as well as dispel some of the myths around focus-building suggestions.

Before we jump into our own suggestions, let’s start by talking about what factors can affect concentration in the morning.

What Factors Can Affect Concentration?

There are actually plenty of factors that can affect concentration, but what you need to be worried about will depend largely on your household life.

Are you living alone or with roommates? Do you have a spouse and/or children? What about pets? Noisy neighbors? Construction nearby that starts early in the morning? All of these factors can affect concentration and what you can do to combat them might be somewhat limited.

You can always work with your spouse to give each other a bit of self-care time in the morning, to allow for focus-building techniques. You can also take turns with the children so that each of you has at least a little bit of time to decompress at the start of the day.

For the factors that you can’t change outside your home, consider investing in some noise-canceling headphones that will allow you to separate yourself from noisy environments, without having to actually leave your house.

Why You Should Work to Improve Your Focus in the Morning

With all these distractions in our lives, it’s no wonder that so many of us struggle to improve our focus at the beginning of the day.

However, mindfulness (which helps promote focus) is incredibly beneficial for us, especially early in the day. In fact, for some people (like those with stress-related illnesses), this can be extremely important for their health.

All-in-all, taking steps on how to improve focus in the morning will make challenging days more bearable and normal days more enjoyable. You’ll be more productive, and in turn, feel better about how your day is going.

We think that’s a pretty great reason to try and make some small adjustments to your morning regimen.

3 Myths About How to Improve Focus in the Morning

There are a lot of misconceptions about how to improve focus.

Let’s look at a few of these myths and talk about how they’re incorrect:

Myth – Having Trouble Focusing Means You Have ADHD

This is a surprisingly common belief that’s not at all based in fact.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a disorder that many people have come to believe is often diagnosed too quickly, to justify putting children with focusing issues on medication to try and force the problem away.

Unfortunately, in many cases, this doesn’t even work. Some studies have even shown that spending more time teaching children how to focus their attention, instead of turning to prescription medication, can be much more beneficial in teaching them how to improve their focus in the long term.

Myth – You Can’t Teach Yourself How to Focus

Another myth that seems to be based on the mentality that all focus-based issues can be solved with heavy medication.

Sure, teaching anyone with focusing issues tricks for how to improve focus may not be easy, but that absolutely doesn’t make it impossible.

Changing our mental habits (or in some cases, removing bad habits that cause distraction), takes time and effort. In the digital age, we’re surrounded more than ever by a never-ending stream of distractions.

Creating a plan of action to address our lack of focus is the first step toward teaching ourselves how to improve our focus on our own. It’s not impossible – it just takes commitment and time.

Myth – Focus Only Applies to Work

Just because you’re not working in the morning (most likely), doesn’t mean that your focus isn’t needed at the start of the day.

Most people have some kind of responsibilities that they need to accomplish in the mornings, such as taking care of pets/children/parents/etc., but without some kind of focus, those responsibilities can be overlooked or neglected.

We’re not talking about gross negligence like forgetting to feed your kids, but you might not realize how a lack of focus or energy can have an impact on their mental health at the start of the day as well.

Focus applies to many different parts of our lives – much more than just our careers.

3 Tips for How to Improve Focus in the Morning:

1.) Increase Your Electrolyte Intake

Electrolytes do a surprising number of positive things for our bodies, including:

• Balancing your body’s Ph levels
• Moving nutrients into cells and waste out
• Balancing the amount of water your body is holding
• Encouraging good function with your brain, heart, muscles, and nervous system

As you can see, not having enough electrolytes could have a massive negative effect on how to focus. Improve your electrolytes by enjoying this tasty electrolyte powder in one of your morning glasses of water.

This is sure to help perk up your energy levels and make it a bit easier to focus as you’re getting ready for the day.

2.) Perform a Relaxing Task that Requires Concentration

This might seem counterintuitive (or at least tedious), but we’re not talking about chores – per se.

There are lots of pleasant activities that you can enjoy in just a few minutes in the morning, which require concentration and can encourage better focus for you throughout the remainder of the day.

Try this Zen Garden, for instance. Taking a couple of minutes to rake the sand and center your mind can be the perfect way to use a little bit of focus to put yourself in the right mindset to face the rest of your daily schedule.

3.) Start a Morning Cleansing Ritual

Focus is affected as much by our physical health as it is by our mental health, as well.

This means that taking the time for some mindfulness in the morning through instituting a cleansing ritual can be the perfect way to improve focus.

There’s no one single way to accomplish this – it depends on what you believe will work best for you.

Whether you’re choosing to start meditating in the morning for a little while, or you’re taking the time to let out some creative energies, you’ll also be bolstering your ability to focus as well.

Start Every Morning with Healthy Mental Habits

Productivity & Happiness Can Go Hand-in-Hand

With all these tips in mind, it’s important to remember that you should be trying to improve your focus for your own well-being, not just so you can be more productive at work.

Your mental health is more important than productivity, and if you really want to improve your focus in a way that’s maintainable on a day-to-day basis, it needs to be something you enjoy as well.

Once you find a healthy balance of routines that promote better focus and overall healthier habits for you, you’ll have everything you need to own your morning and rule your days – no matter what life might throw at you.