Your brain uses a lot of energy—about a third of what your whole body uses! So if you don’t give it the fuel it needs, it can’t work well. Eating foods such as eggs, fish, and nuts that are rich in important chemicals can help your brain work well. Not eating well makes it hard to concentrate!

During sleep the brain rests and restores the brain chemicals you used during the day. It also consolidates and stores memories. Getting enough sleep allows the brain to recharge and helps memory and learning. Getting too little can make it hard to concentrate on your work, and your performance can go down by as much as 30%!

When you have lots of different things happening at once, your brain is being pulled in too many different directions—like trying to watch 3 channels on TV at the same time! Avoid distractions in your environment that make it hard to concentrate, and focus on the thing you need to learn.

Your brain has more than one channel for information—all five senses take in information, and use different parts of the brain. Some people learn best through their eyes, others through hearing, and some through movement. Use more than one sense (seeing, hearing, movement/touch) and more than one way of learning for one subject, and you will get more of your brain involved in learning. This helps keep your attention so you won’t get bored.

When you are doing something active you are less bored and you can concentrate better. Ways to do this include: drawing a related diagram, putting ideas in your own words, writing notes, taking a stretching break, explaining an idea to someone else, or making up problem sets and solving them.