9 Powerful Ways to Reset Your Mind and Improve Mental Focus

These brain-stretching activities helped me reach a personal goal of writing 20,000 words in a week.

After going through a tough time last year involving a career transition and too much work-related travel, I hit a very rough patch in my creative output.

Despite the fact that I was working a lot, and “attempting” to write, my work/life balance suffered, as well as my relationship with my children. The whole time I could feel everything getting to me, and it built up until I knew I had grown solidly depressed. I was the proverbial unsuspecting frog in a pot of water, slowly warmed to the point of boiling.

I made a New Year’s resolution to change all of this.

I went into this quest with a combination of skepticism and optimism, my two most dominant mental traits. Both have proven to be simultaneously helpful and sometimes troublesome, though luckily erring toward the helpful side of that spectrum. I was delighted, though not surprised, to find that there were so many ways to really challenge my mind that actually worked.

The greatest benefit seemed to come from pursuing a combination of exercises. I ended up adding something new every few days. I noticed improvements in my mood as well as creative output within the first two weeks.

Feeling self-improved, I started writing on Medium, focused more on my diet and exercise habits, started a new novel, and wrote a short story to submit for an anthology, something I had never done before. This culminated a couple of weeks ago when I wrote over 20,000 words in a single week.

Beginning in April, I started looking for some new ways to enhance my brain exercise regimen, and these are some of my favorites so far.

Choose the More Difficult Path

Rather than always doing something in the easiest possible way or taking the path of least resistance, I’ve found that intentionally choosing to do something in a somewhat more complicated or lengthy manner is often more mentally engaging.

Of course, you need to have the time to spare for this type of exercise, as doing something like taking a more circuitous route to work or manually calculating formulas is going to add some minutes to your day.

But the reward here is well worth doing this a few times a week, as you force your mind to operate at a more granular level than you’re used to.

Course Correct When You Get Lost in Thought

We all get inside our own heads way too much at times. Turning inward is a good thing. Introspection helps us understand ourselves and our place in the world. But it can be all too easy to get carried away by it and end up in an endless loop that takes you nowhere.

When you sense this happening, immediately flip yourself inside-out and use that mental energy to work on a real-world problem or project.

Simultaneous Sensory Engagement

Seek out activities that really use more than one of your senses. These tend to be physical much of the time, like swimming, hiking, cooking… and sex!

This is one of the many mental exercises that can be done every day, and even multiple times in a day. I know, you could say that I’m stretching the definition of mental exercise with this one quite a bit. But many people don’t actually do something that really qualifies every day.

They’ll go from home to work to sleep, and repeat that several days in a row before the weekend arrives and they finally really go out and do something. We need to fight this drift toward monotony that drains us during the workweek.

Take the Duolingo Challenge

Duolingo is an awesome language-learning app that has been available for years now and is a highly effective tool you can use to rather quickly reach a basic level of proficiency.

The challenge is this: Reach at least Level 8 in a new language every month for a year. There are currently 25 languages available to learn, not excluding High Valyrian, Klingon or Esperanto.

Engage in Finger-Focused Activities

This can be anything from violin or piano to cross-stitch to a detailed drawing. Whatever it is, very granular hand-eye coordination is an excellent way to involve large areas of your brain and generate new neural connections.

I used to draw a lot when I was younger and started doing that again, making it a goal of mine to improve as much as possible in still life drawing. I also began some piano lessons. Within just a few days, I found myself actually falling asleep more easily at night if I pecked at some piano (keyboard, not grand) keys for fifteen or so minutes before bed each night.

Push Beyond Mastery

If you ever feel that you’ve finally reached a level of mastery when it comes to any activity or hobby (however subjective that term may actually be), you shouldn’t allow boredom to erect any walls between you and whatever-it-is.

What you need to do instead is push through that limit called “mastery” and challenge yourself to reach a new height.

Take a Catnap

Many well-known figures have extolled the virtues of taking short naps throughout the day (Einstein, da Vinci, Edison, Thatcher, JFK), and most of us have felt the benefit of this at some point in our lives when we had the luxury of a midday siesta.

However, this shouldn’t be a “luxury” at all. Just like making time for some physical exercise every day, a couple of small 10–15-minute “nap breaks” — one mid-morning and one mid-afternoon — will give you just enough time to relax and recharge.

When I started doing this, I was surprised by just how much more energy I seemed to have immediately at my disposal.

Practice Meditation

On the surface, this may seem like the polar opposite to the suggestion above. However, when done properly, meditation is the perfect complement to sensory indulgence. This works very well right after exercise in the early morning — or it can be done in place of one of your “catnaps”.

If you are new to this, a great starting point is this story on Medium by Mindvalley Authors.

Meet New People Often

There is almost no better way to really expand your mind than to interact with new people on a regular basis. You enhance your knowledge of the world and human experience, practice empathy, and grow your network and opportunities.

Most of us experience a shrinking of our social circle as we grow older, with the size of our social web peaking in our early 20’s. As family and career shifts move us around and away from our roots, we lose a lot of the original groundwork.

We need to actively battle against this by going to more social events, gatherings, meetups, and entering new settings on a regular basis. As you replenish and grow your social network you will find gains in productivity and creativity.

Forge Ahead…

More than anything else, I feel that persistence is the real key to self-improvement. If something throws me off track, it is all too easy to fall back on old habits and thereby lose momentum.

If I want to make real strides, I have to make forward progress in many, if not all, of these varied areas. Not every single one may work every single day. In fact, some choices just might not resonate with me on a given day, or there simply may not be enough time or opportunity.

But as long as I make a sincere attempt to take advantage of them whenever it’s possible, I see and feel improvement.

You will probably discover other methods and activities to grow simply by trying the suggestions of others. That chance alone is worth dedicating time to testing those suggestions. I know I do.

Medium contains thousands of articles, all from unique perspectives and containing advice that may or may not be the best fit for you, but odds are you will find many useful tips and tricks among them.

Thank you for reading and sharing! If you would like to support me further as a writer you can purchase my novel “Talisman of Earth” here: https://amzn.to/3rTHS1f