Lifestyle changes

Several things could help improve attention even without an ADHD diagnosis. These include

• Making lists and having reminders.
• Preparing things in advance, such as packing your bag and laying out your clothes the night before.
• Try to keep things organised so you know where things are.
• Keep to routines, so you know what you will need and when.
• Avoid using your phone or playing on computers for long periods – these activities cause a lot of dopamine release in your brain, which, although feels great at the time, tends to make you want to spend longer and longer on these devices. Your brain then struggles to focus on less stimulating things making work, reading, or activities that require a lot of attention harder to do.

Please see the link for a podcast that may be useful to explore this further.

Sleep

When you don’t get enough sleep, your brain struggles to process information, reaction times increase, you respond poorly to environmental signals, and you can be more confused. It’s harder for you to remember things, and you often have to keep re-reading information to understand and process it. Research has shown that increasing the amount of sleep (to 8hrs) can increase your grades in exams and tests to roughly a 20% improvement. Therefore, implementing a good sleep routine is important to ensure you get as much quality sleep as possible.

Diet

Eating a balanced diet is important in ensuring good brain health and helping with focus. Skipping meals and being hungry will impact our brain’s ability to focus on work as it will be trying to determine where the next meal is coming from. The brain also likes a steady supply of nutrition. Our brains need about 400-500kcal a day to function well, so restricting diets will impact cognitive ability.

Brain-boosting foods include green leafy vegetables, fatty fish like salmon, berries (blueberries, strawberries, etc.), walnuts, and caffeine.

Exercise

The higher your physical fitness is, the better your brain is greater the improvement in attention and concentration, working memory, cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, and processing speed.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is an innate human capacity to deliberately pay full attention to where we are and our experiences and learn from them. Jack Komfield (2005)

Mindfulness can be beneficial for improving attention in both ADHD and non-ADHD people. Due to many of our current lifestyle choices (phone use, social media, immediate access to information), our brains are learning not to have sustained attention. Mindfulness is a way to improve concentration by practicing this type of focus.

Caffeine

Several studies have demonstrated that caffeine increases both selective and sustained attention. Caution must be used as too much caffeine could cause difficulty with sleep and ‘jitteriness.’