Concentration Meditation: 12 Focus Exercises To Get You ‘In The Zone’

Do you have a hard time focusing and wonder if concentration meditation will help?

Right now, times are tough. There are hundreds of news stories, social media posts, and other distractions all vying for your attention — all screaming (loudly) about how important they are.

Even before the world turned upside down, you already had a hard time concentrating. Then along came a pandemic and ruined any chance of being able to sit down and concentrate on anything important.

But what if I told you your concentration is already 10 times better than you think it is?

Chances are, you just haven’t learned how to pay attention to what concentration really is. So in today’s post, I’m going to break it all down — and I’ll teach you a number of exercises you can use to boost your focus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4PvLkzDB0o

You’ll learn how to use concentration meditation, the benefits, and what shortcuts do (and don’t) work.

Here’s what this post will cover:

What is Concentration, Exactly?
Benefits of Concentration Meditation
Examples of Concentration
Concentration Shortcuts
How to Get into a Flow State
Types of Concentration Meditation
1. Object Focus Meditation
2. Word Focus Meditation
3. Moving Meditation
4. Breathing Meditation
5. Number Skipping Meditation
6. Chanting Mantras
7. Biographical Thought Control Exercise
8. Movie House Exercise
9. The Music Album Exercise
10. Neti Neti Exercise
11. Flight of the Garuda Exercise
12. Memory Palace Recall Exercise
Meditation and the Framing Effect
Concentration Meditation FAQs

Ready? Let’s get started.

First, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I could not live without concentration, and neither could you. Here’s why exercises like these have been so important and helpful for me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvtYjdriSpM

And get this:

Memory will improve meditation — and meditation will improve memory.

So let’s begin with a definition.

What is Concentration, Exactly?

When you think about the word concentration, what comes to mind?

It probably brings up images of someone super focused. Maybe they’re reading a long and complex novel, studying for a big exam, or doing a task that involves being really careful. Or maybe you think about visualization meditation as the ultimate way to sharpen your concentration.

Let’s look at four aspects of concentration you might not have considered.

Focus All Your Attention

The dictionary says concentration is the action or power of focusing all one’s attention. The two most important words in that definition are “all” and “attention.”

So what does it mean to have the action or power of all one’s attention in concentration?

Let’s start thinking about concentration by thinking about it as circles. Why? Because the word “concentration” comes from “concentric.” That means having a common center. And this is why you’re probably more concentrated than you think.

It’s a matter of which circle or sphere of concentration you’re currently in.

The meditation for focus and concentration you’ll learn later in this post is part of a tactical strategy guide. You’ll learn how to go out and try different things. And you’ll see (as I mentioned in the opening) how you’re already much further ahead than you think you are.

This post and the meditations and exercises you’ll learn will help you accelerate your progress with concentration very quickly.

Be Aware of Your Awareness

If we dive even deeper into this idea of concentration, it can also be a careful mental application of your awareness itself — not just attention. When you’re aware, you’re already concentrated.

How aware are you of your awareness? If you were to give it a number out of 100, what would it be? 80 percent aware? 20 percent aware?

Do you even know if you’re aware of your awareness… or not?

The reason I ask you to think about this is, arguably, all we are is awareness. Therefore, we’re always 100% concentrated. We’re already there.

If you’re feeling a little confused or like this concept is a bit far out there, I’d encourage you to read a book called Standing as Awareness: The Direct Path by Greg Goode. The book can help you wrap your mind around this concept — it’s eye-opening when you start to understand what awareness is, and how it ties into concentration and focus.

Moreover, my research has revealed that memory training has been about realizing total presence since at least the 1500s. I talk about this in-depth in a mindfulness YouTube series I’m developing called The New Art of Memory.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkZ2FGJhR5R9njWtWwRrkZKaq8j7OjDL3

Shift Your Understanding

A close mental application of concentration, paired with the meditations we’ll do later, require a shift in understanding.

Because concentration is only as good as your awareness of awareness itself.

And awareness of consciousness is not just that, but it’s awareness of consciousness plus something – which is everything in it. Everything that is consciousness right now.

And you can zero in and focus, or you can zoom out and be much wider, and you can think about things as a kind of oneness.

In some sense, this is what you want to get to. You want to live in the zone. You want to be so focused, so hyper-aware, that you’re just blissful every single moment — because you have this oneness with the present moment.

As a tactic for creating laser focus that stands the test of time – and hopefully also improves and grows in intensity over time – you have to understand it as awareness.

And if you want to learn even more, Greg Goode also wrote a book called The Direct Path, which has even more activities. These will really help you exercise your focus and concentration muscles.

Don’t Lose Yourself in the World

When I think about how to define concentration and attention, I think of a line from Eckhart Tolle’s book Stillness Speaks:

“When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world. Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the ‘I am’ that is deeper than name and form.”

This is what we’re after when we want to increase our concentration. We want to not lose ourselves in the world. We want to be that observer of all that is in the world.

Stillness is being the witness to all that is in our awareness as we are standing as awareness. Eckhart Tolle says that “Stillness is your essential nature,” and you can get there with a bit of time and practice.

There are all the kinds of things you will achieve when you understand that concentration is stillness — and when you are, as Greg puts it, standing as awareness.

All focus. All concentration, in that moment, on a singular action, a singular movement. This is what you already are. You just have forgotten it.

Next, let’s look at the benefits of meditation for concentration and focus.

Benefits of Concentration Meditation

Concentration is stillness. It allows you to take a drifting mind and bring it back to center, to your essential nature.

This means you don’t really have to do much to get yourself back there, but it’s still helpful to understand how you can “stand as awareness.” When you get knocked down, to know how to come back to center so you can work around irrelevant thoughts.

Neutralize Your Thoughts

You can’t totally eliminate distracting thoughts… but you can turn them off.

When you’re able to change the form of their energy, you can – as the Atma Bodha says – change thoughts through practice:

“Constant practice of self-knowledge neutralizes ignorance as a base neutralizes an acid, purifying the individual self.”

In this case, ignorance is not being in stillness. Not being able to find your way back to center because you’re not practicing self-knowledge.

One of the things to focus on here is a Zen principle: finding the starting point is always the practice. You just have to find the start — because always being at the starting point is the goal.

The wave of our focus and our concentration is always changing. So how can we be constantly in search of the starting point?

Make Motivation Irrelevant

When you understand that concentration is stillness, you eliminate the need for motivation.

A lot of people say they’re “not motivated” — they’re constantly waiting for inspiration or motivation to strike. But motivation isn’t real. It isn’t a strategy.

And motivation is never going to just randomly show up on a Tuesday.

What would better serve you is to get past motivation. And the way you do that is to realize you are already what you seek.

It’s like this line from The Flight of the Garuda:

“The nature of mind in its purity is like a stainless crystal ball. Its essence is emptiness, its nature is clarity, and its responsiveness is a continuum. In no way, whatsoever, is the nature of mind affected by samsara’s negativity. From the first, it is Buddha, ‘Trust in this.'”

Only a Buddha knows a Buddha — you are already awareness. You are perfect stillness. But ignorance of this quiet moment, the stillness inside you, throws you off seeing what’s right in front of your eyes.

Instead, you clamor for motivation and get attached to the idea of needing to be motivated in order to accomplish anything.

Get Centered

When you get to the point where you realize that concentration is stillness, your memory will improve.

No matter what’s going on in your life, you are able to find stillness. Whether you have family in a COVID-19 outbreak area who can’t find masks or you have a garden-variety bad day, practicing concentration meditation helps you focus.

You don’t need to be motivated — because motivation is irrelevant when you have true concentration. And then your memory improves. You find your way back when you lose your place. You find your way back to the starting point we just talked about.

It’s no longer an intellectual thing. Instead, it’s something you live. You live it because it’s the only thing that exists. Because you’re so concentrated on it.

Stop Forgetting

When you start to live this type of awareness, you have access to a broad range of techniques that help you get back to center.

You stop forgetting what you need to do next. Have you ever had that experience where you have so many things you need to do, but you don’t remember what it was that you need to do next? That goes away.

We can talk about oneness, but in the oneness there are many techniques. One is the most dangerous number — and that’s why there are 12 different techniques included in this post for you to explore.

Destroy Boredom

So many people say they’re struggling with boredom. But boredom simply isn’t necessary — it’s a choice.

If you want a simple way to get rid of boredom, I would suggest picking up some “bring gratitude” cards — they have a number of exercises to help you understand how blessed you are.

If you have internet access, you have no right to be bored. Instead, get yourself some gratitude for your life and kick boredom to the curb.

Next, let’s look at some direct benefits of concentration meditation.

Short- and Long-Term Memory Boosts

We’ve covered a number of the benefits so far, but I want to talk about a few that will help you as you build focus and concentration.

There are both short- and long-term memory benefits that come along with regular concentration meditation practice. You’ll also discover the nature of your focus — and what breaks or impedes it.

Restore Your Focus

As you continue to meditate consistently, over time you’ll start to notice your awareness is segmented.

It’s like the concentric circles we talked about at the beginning of this post. You’ll be able to get back to certain circles in your awareness, see what breaks your concentration, and then – much like a Zen archer – shoot an arrow through the thing interrupting you.

And even if you get impeded, you’ll be held up for less time — and less often. The circle continues, and you’ll grow your gratitude and be able to take more risks.

Tame the Monkey Mind

So many people have issues with monkey mind. I’ve had years of suffering from it, and know it’s no fun. Mindfulness meditation teachers often describe the mind as a scorpion-bitten, drunk monkey — it’s that hard to control it without dedicated practice.

When you do shoot those Zen-arrows, you want them aimed in the right direction, and at the time of your decision.

In an ideal world, you can tame the monkey mind and think what you want to think when you want to think it.

Make Better Decisions

When you are able to re-perceive, it helps lead to better decisions.

But what does that mean? To answer, let’s take a look at a 2017 study by Elisabeth Norman, Metacognition and Mindfulness: the Role of Fringe Consciousness.

She says (lightly edited):

Over the last years, there has been an increased interest in the relationship between mindfulness and metacognition… The relevance of metacognition to mindfulness can be illustrated by the fact that heightened attention and an open orientation to one’s own mental events, which are characteristic of mindful states, both require that the person monitors and controls aspects of their ongoing cognitive activity, which are the two core functional mechanisms of metacognition…

[One of the referenced studies] specifically linked mindfulness to metacognition, arguing that the process of mindfully attending with openness and nonjudgementalness leads to what is referred to as reperceiving. This involves a shift in perspective, where thoughts, feelings, and sensations that were previously “subject” now become “object,” in the sense that they are experienced more independently of one’s expectations, experience, or attitudes. This involves a more flexible attitude to one’s experiences. The contrasting state of mind would be mindlessness, during which the individual is highly context-dependent, ignorant to novel aspects of their environment, and over reliant on learned schemas and scripts.

When you are able to shift your perspective, you can experience life away from the structure of your likes and dislikes, your experience, and any assumptions that might lead to poor choices.

Improve Willpower

I don’t want to get lost in the weeds of free will — but I do want you to understand that when you understand the difference between choice and selection, you will have a greater ability to have acts of will.

Choice is an illusion. There’s no power to choose. You are born, you don’t choose your parents, and then karma takes over. Then you constantly face the pressures of the laws of reality — you have to eat, you have to breathe. There’s no choice involved.

Choice creates great misery.

At the same time, you’ll have many selections to make. The quality of the selections you make has a lot to do with the field of your awareness — how big it is, how well-practiced, and how cultivated through constant study and implementation.

So you get to select from a field of potential things, not choose. And you need to select better, to use acts of will in order to select.

The important benefit comes when you can see the distinction and accept the things you can’t change. This allows you to focus instead on using your acts of will to select better in life, rather than reacting when things appear in your field.

Cultivate Patience

I always think about the story in Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now where he talks about how to react when you’re waiting and someone doesn’t show up on time. Instead of being angry they’re late, you could just say, “Oh, I wasn’t waiting for you. I was just enjoying being here. Just being.”

Concentration meditation will help you achieve that attitude. By paying more attention to the current moment rather than getting upset about someone else’s behavior, you get to enjoy whatever is happening in the moment.

There are a bunch of brain chemicals that switch on when you meditate — in a podcast episode with Daniel Kahneman, Sam Harris calls it “heroin-level meditation.” I don’t know if that’s the best analogy for it, but it certainly feels great.

There is some research indicating the chemicals produced when you meditate consistently are similar to the effects of taking Psilocybin mushrooms or Peyote.

And having taken a bunch of hallucinatory drugs in my day, I can tell you there’s definitely a relationship. But my recommendation – if you want to be high all the time – do this instead. Do these concentration exercises regularly and you don’t need to take drugs.

Mental Minimalism

You might know what minimalism means in terms of the amount of stuff you own, but what does mental minimalism mean?

It comes from removing thoughts that do not serve, and having the courage to remove objects.

One of the reasons people have so much junk in their minds is because they have so much junk in the environment around them. It’s very hard for some people to get rid of clutter, and the two go together.

But if you have the courage to remove clutter from your life, you will likely also have fewer thoughts and much more freedom.

Higher-Order Focus

The last benefit of concentration meditation we’ll discuss today is you’ll probably spend much more time on higher-order projects.

Instead of spending your life in death-by-1000-papercuts mode, you can spend time and mental energy creating a vision for your life. Then, once you have your life vision in place, you can set objectives and organize your time such that you actually achieve those goals.

The more you meditate, the more likely you’ll see these higher-order topics, spend more time on them, and actually gain traction in your life.

Next, let’s look at a few examples of what concentration might look like in the real world.

Examples of Concentration

Let’s take a quick peek at a few examples.

In the Zone

From time to time, everyone feels like they’re “in the zone.” This means being in the task-positive network of the brain, as opposed to the default mode network.

The default mode network is characterized by “me” in the future or past. Instead, the task-positive network means being fully present in the moment — you’re absolutely in the here-and-now and loving every minute of what’s happening.

For me, this happens when I’m up on stage playing music. I was in the zone every night, because as soon as you count off there’s no stopping until the song is over. We were there with the audience, seeing their reactions, and waiting for the next song to start.

Check Your Strings

In the tennis world, this happens when a player makes a mistake or misses a shot and then wanders off and checks the strings on their racquet.

What might seem funny to an outsider is that they have the most expensive racquets in the world and yet they still check to make sure there’s nothing wrong with their equipment. What you might not know is it’s a way for the player to remove their mind from the thing that just happened.

It’s another example of concentration where you correct yourself to get back on course. When you get knocked out of the zone, how can you get back into it quickly? Instead of beating yourself up and thinking, “Oh, I always make this mistake. I’m so stupid!” you get the chance to stand up, dust yourself off, and get back in the zone.

If you think about being in the zone as the middle point in a circle, how do you get knocked out of the zone? You don’t. Instead, you get knocked one concentric circle back — you’re not totally out of the circle. It’s an opportunity to collect yourself and your concentration and get back to center.

You’re never not concentrated. If you make a mistake and your focus shifts to your reaction to the mistake, you’re still 100% concentrated. Your awareness is now totally focused on the mistake.

The metacognitive skill becomes how to bounce back to the center of the circle.

Vicarious Experiences

A great illustration of a vicarious experience is when you’re so engrossed in watching a movie it’s like you’re right there with the main characters.

For example, if you were watching The Matrix and you identify so strongly with Neo you feel it when he gets punched. Or when Trinity is in a tricky situation where she needs to run away and can’t — and your psycho-motor responses react with sweaty palms or a pounding heart.

In real life, we can (and often do) construct this kind of galvanic response in our bodies. When you get caught up in a mistake and can’t stop thinking about it, that’s a vicarious experience of the past.

Mindfulness Meditation

Just showing up to meditate is already an example of concentration. It’s like the old Woody Allen line, “eighty percent of success is just showing up.”

You don’t have to do it perfectly. Just show up. Even if you try just one of the exercises included in this post you’ll learn so much about yourself.

And if you haven’t read it already, take a read through my post called How to Improve Concentration and Memory Buddha-Style. There’s a ton of science about the benefits of meditation and some practical advice about how to get started.

Now let’s talk about some concentration shortcuts, and why they don’t work.

Concentration Shortcuts (That Don’t Work)

Sorry, but there’s no shortcut to concentration and focus!

The exercises later in the post are not shortcuts — this is something where you need to be all in. My dad used to say, “[censored] or get off the pot.” And that’s how this is going to work. If you want progress, you have to do the work.

Let’s take a look at the claims some people make about ways to shortcut your way to concentration.

Supplements

One of the so-called shortcuts to gain focus is to take a bunch of supplements. In a post entitled 9 Nootropics to Unlock Your True Brain, Dave Asprey contradicts himself quite a bit, but he nails it by the end.

The first mistake in the post is that there’s such a thing as a “true brain.” I know it’s just semantics, but the brain is a living breathing thing. It changes with every breath we take and every pump of our hearts. So a “true brain” doesn’t exist, insofar as your brain is flexible in the moment.

If you’re supplementing your brain, at some point it will need to be supplemented again. I think this is an issue, because – as Dave points out – supplements can lead to depression and changes in character. Add in the purity and quality issues inherent with supplements, and you could end up killing yourself.

And so he gives the solution: fix your diet first. A lot of people wouldn’t need supplements at all if their diets were right. In many cases, a healthy and complete diet will give you the vitamins and minerals your brain needs.

You should also aim for a sattvic diet – one that keeps you in a headspace of clarity and contentment – and avoid rajasic and tamasic foods. Rajasic foods irritate you, and tamasic foods make you lazy and slow.

The key thing to remember is: there’s no shortcut to the perfect diet. No one person has the answer for you. It’s up to you to try things out, test how they work for you, and test some more. It took me six months of this kind of testing to figure out my current diet.

A lot of people ask why there’s no Magnetic Memory Method memory supplement. The main reason is I haven’t found any type of supplement that helps more than drinking a glass of water. Seriously! Research shows you can improve your verbal memory by drinking water.

Doing Nothing

Unfortunately, doing nothing is a shortcut many people try. And, as you might imagine, it doesn’t work.

But why do people do nothing? Because it’s the easy path. And when it comes to memory, concentration, and focus many people are happy to just get by.

Doing nothing, changing nothing, has just as many wear-and-tear issues on your body as anything else. Your posture can be destroyed by staring at your cell phone, in kyphosis, all day long — or by laying on the couch all day.

But some people will still take this path.

Inconsistent Practice

Consistency is key if you want to maintain sustained focus for long periods of time and achieve flow.

Half the battle here is making sure you have habits intact. At the end of the day, there are lots of ways to get your habits going, flowing, and growing. I would suggest you forget about other people’s opinions and just do what works for you.

Here’s a list of my favorite habit-formation resources.

Form Habits Like the Pros

Let’s take a look at three of my favorite books on the topic.

Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential — by Barbara Oakley

This book is great because it not only teaches you about how to get habits going, but also teaches why habits are so hard to start in the first place. (It all has to do with the insular cortex in your brain.)

There’s also an in-depth review of the book here on Magnetic Memory Method if you want to learn more.

The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born, It’s Grown — by Daniel Coyle

This is one of my favorite books. It was one of the first places I read about dopamine, myelin, and all of the opioid receptors.

There’s a way to grow your greatness and Daniel spells it out clearly. Your brain is a garden and it’s as simple as growing it.

Atomic Habits — by James Clear

James is an author I interviewed for the podcast a couple of years ago. In the interview, you’ll hear a discussion about how to write a book in a habitual way — and it’s the book I’m currently getting into audiobook format.

Now let’s look at a few ways you can get “in the zone.”

How to Get into a Flow State

Remember, a flow state is the level of focus and concentration where time seems to disappear and you get so absorbed in your work nothing else exists.

The scientific term for this state is called an autotelic experience.

Autotelic Flow

Ideally, doing something becomes its own reward. We want to be switched on. We don’t want to think about it — we just want to show up and have flow happen.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says:

“An autotelic person needs few material possessions and little entertainment, little comfort, or power, or fame because so much of what he or she does is already rewarding. Because such persons experience flow in work, in family life, when interacting with people, when eating, even alone, with nothing to do, they depend less on external rewards that keep others motivated to go on with a life of routines. They’re more autonomous and independent because they cannot be as easily manipulated with treats or rewards from the outside. At the same time, they are more involved with everything around them because they are fully immersed in the current of life.”

I believe every single one of us can become either an autotelic person or get better at it. But what if you have a really hard time getting into flow?

How Do You Induce a Flow State?

We talked earlier about vision statements, creating actual milestones, and scheduling your time. That’s part of it — build it so you can get to work and focus on those things. Concentration meditation will also help you get into a flow state.

As you’re working to get there, you might also consider self-hypnosis.

There’s a long story in my past about not wanting to write my Ph.D. dissertation — it involves getting really drunk and busting my head open on a kettlebell (resulting in an ER trip and stitches) and led to me getting into self-hypnosis to get my dissertation written.

I already had my National Guild of Hypnotism (NGH) certification, so I sat down and made a recording to help myself get the dissertation done. And while I won’t get into the ins and outs of how to hypnotize yourself, it is a type of concentration meditation.

If you go and get hypnotized by somebody else (if they know what they’re doing and are any good at it) it’s also a kind of concentration meditation. We just use different words.

The difference is – as the Amazing Kreskin says – “it’s persuasion.” Persuasion is nothing more than the acceptance of a suggestion. Similarly, hypnosis is nothing more than acceptance of a suggestion.

We’re going to do a lot more about meditation for concentration and focus moving forward. I created a Facebook page about the topic, and I’d love for you to join us there.

Next, we’ll look at the different types of concentration meditation. Grab a piece of paper or your favorite note-taking system and let’s get learning!

Types of Concentration Meditation

Everyone needs to explore a range of meditations and ideally have more than one kind in their “meditation stack” for the best results.

A 2017 article explores some interesting gender considerations to keep in mind. And since there’s no single meditation that works for everyone, we’ll learn about 12 different approaches you can take.

Some of these examples are not really meditations but rather exercises to help you concentrate.

If you want to see examples of these meditations in action, you can check out