Reading is a very important skill to have. More than a skill, it’s a tool which can help in the overall personality development of an individual. Reading can have multiple benefits on the wellbeing and development of the human brain.

The various benefits of reading include, enhancement of concentration levels, better coordination, improvement in verbal and written communication skills, increases confidence, enhances your vocabulary, builds critical thinking skills, and teaches moral values and many more.

But in order to get all of these it is very important it read and fully understand what you are reading about. Although it is not as easy as it may sound, because in order to fully comprehend the contents requires utter focus which most people have a difficulty with.

Many times it happens that you may be reading about something, but your mind wanders off on something else, but your eyes are still following the texts yet you understand nothing and have to start over. This is the most common difficulty people face while reading, most people have an issue with grasping the process of how to focus on reading while they are reading and not get distracted.

In this article we will cover the easiest things you can do to understand how to focus on reading, and increase your reading skills in the most effective way.

1. Getting in your comfort zone: You cannot focus if you’re fidgety and experiencing discomfort. Find a comfortable spot where you can sit and relax, without having to move ever so often because of some inconvenience. Though it is important to read in a comfortable location, you should also keep in mind that you don’t get too comfortable. Because as it happens with students often that they get drowsy while reading, and hence fall asleep or lose their focus completely.
2. Listening to music: It has been well observed that playing music in the background while studying or reading can improve your focus. By music we do not mean heavy metal or loud songs, instead play soft instrumental music on low volume. This will help in giving your mind a soothing effect and allow you to read more easily and at a faster pace.
3. Remove all distraction: Get rid of the things that distract you most often. While you are reading, keep your phone away from you, and avoid looking at the clock. This will help you in reading for longer durations and allow you to not feel the overwhelming time pressure.
4. Don’t judge a book by its cover: One of the biggest reason to lose focus while reading a book or a novel is considering the book to be boring or not interesting enough before even reading the first page. This sets a thought in the brain due to which you cannot focus on the text while reading it.
5. Go through the pages before you start Reading: Before you actually start reading the book, get an overview of the contents inside the book by going over the main titles and headings in it. This gives you an idea of what you will learn from reading it, and pushes you to read further more to get to that heading or chapter whose name has stuck with you.
6. Walk around: It is often suggested that reading while moving around and taking small walks at a slow pace helps in staying attentive and maintains your focus on the text. You should, however, mind your surrounding and clear up the floor beforehand so that you don’t trip and hurt yourself.
7. Recite and Read Aloud: Reading the sentences aloud helps in better understanding the text as it keeps you engaged in the texts and develops a flow of reading. You can read aloud as though you are reciting the story to a friend, this will keep your eyes as well as your ears involved and thus helping in better engagement. 
8. Break the content into sections: While reading a chapter from a novel or a book, which is usually long, or even if its not, you should break the contents into manageable paragraphs which do not stress you out and are easy to understand. After completing each segment, try to summarise the takeaways from them in your mind. This will keep a track of events as the narrative proceeds.
9. Take help of fingers or a pen to keep focused: Many people find themselves lost while reading because they keep forgetting the last lines they read. This is a fairly common issue as the reading through long paragraphs creates a monotonous routine. Use your fingers or a pen as pointer while reading to guide your eyes through the sentences. This creates a coordination between your eyes and the movements, which also helps in increasing your focus.
10. Take your time on each sentence and understand the text: Don’t rush through the reading process to complete the pages more quickly. It is common tendency of readers to identify frequently occurring phrases and for a pattern of reading them together. This creates a space for misconceptions as a creative author tries to use every word differently. Take your time in understanding each line. In order to do that you must pay attention to each word as you read it.
11. Visualize what you read: A good author always aims at painting a vivid picture in the reader’s mind. Therefore you will find a lot of words and phrases which describe the narrative of the book very elaborately. The descriptive phrases maybe, straight forward, or guised as literary devices. Try to immerse yourself in the book you are reading and visualise the situation in your head. This will engage your mind and make you focused in the reading process.
12. Brainstorm: Brainstorming about the book and it its contents is a great way to improve your focus by increasing the amount of interest you show in the book. Think about the text you read or are going to read in the future when you are not reading it. Think about the possible ways which the plot may evolve into, or what you have learnt so far. This makes the book more interesting and helps you develop a habit of reading more carefully.
13. Make note, and highlight: One other way to increase to focus while reading is keeping a track of the things in the book you found most interesting. You can do this, by taking notes and penning down important points in a notebook, or highlighting the text inside the book as you read it. This creates a mental image in your mind and helps you remember it more easily. This method is mostly used while reading academic materials but it works just as well while trying to focus on reading a novel
14. Keep a vocabulary journal: One of the most important benefits of reading is getting fluency in language and with that, learning new words. Having a wide vocabulary of words is very important as it helps you in learning professionalism and helps you in becoming a better communicator through any medium. While reading, you should note down the words whose meaning you do not know, and also the words that seem interesting to you, and later find the meaning of these words. This will help you greatly in increasing your vocabulary and enhance your academic and career.
15. Do research: In addition to brainstorming over the plot and the contents of the book, you should also, identify the various concepts and phenomenon in the book which you find interesting or on which you want to learn more. Doing research on topics and concepts in a book is a great way in increasing your knowledge base and maintain focus in the reading.
16. Take breaks in between: Reading for too long in a stretch can get quite boring sometimes, and there’s no denying that. Even if the topic is interesting, if you reading about one thing for too long you will start losing your focus. Therefore you should take break in short or wide spread intervals while reading to take your mind and eyes off the texts and soak in the information which you just gained.
17. Meditate to increase focus: One simple answer to the question of how to focus on reading is meditation. Meditation is found to be very helpful in relieving stress and increasing your concentration levels. It also seen that people who meditate then to have a less stress and as a result, they can focus a lot better on their daily tasks. Meditation allows you to focus on reading by eliminating the various distracting thoughts from your mind.
18. Maintain a healthy lifestyle: Having a healthy overall lifestyle helps you in keeping you mind and the body fit and in good shape. A healthy mind and body, allows you to function well and increases your focus on everyday tasks. In order to lead a healthy lifestyle you should workout and eat nutritious food to say fit.
19. Once you finish reading, get an overview of your reading observations: This is another important tip to increase your focus, once you are done reading or when you read through a certain amount of pages or paragraphs, you should get an overview of all the points and learning you made from it. This keeps you notified about the various happenings in the narrative and ensures that you didn’t miss out on anything. By doing this, you increase your interest in the book and increase your focus.

How to focus on reading for overall personality development?
Reading correctly can have a lot of benefits on your mind as well as your body. Here is a list of the most known and the most important benefits of reading:

• Increases Cognitive Skills:People, who have a habit or reading regularly, tend to have more heightened cognitive skills. Cognitive skills involve multiple mental abilities which improve the daily functioning of a human being. A person who reads regularly has the ability to grasp to various concepts and is able to solve intricate problems a lot easily.
• Decreases Stress Levels: Reading is adopted my many individuals to decrease their stress levels. Reading induces a flow of thought which makes a person calmer and hence helps in reducing stress.
• Enhances Vocabulary: By reading regularly, you can increase your vocabulary and enhance your communication skills.
• Improves your Writing Skills: Reading various sentences and phrases from different sources allows you to have a wide range of prerequisite knowledge which you can use to write more impressively.
• Boosts your Imagination: Reading allows you to immerse yourself in the experience and develops a more vivid imaginative skill and overall creativity for a person.
• It’s a form of meditation: Reading has been classified by many, as a way of meditation as it allows people to gather their thoughts and helps in finding peace.
• Helps you sleep better: Reading increases the sleeping habits of a person by providing a greater cycle of REM sleep which is necessary for the mind to recharge.

How to focus on reading is the task most people struggle with, but the results outweigh the problems faced by them, by a huge margin. This is why one must always try to read as much as they can, and read often to enhance their focussing and concentration skills.

This concludes our article on how to focus on reading. The points discussed above can be adopted by any individual, children or adults while reading any kind of document, be it academic or non-academic.

Hope this article helped in understanding how to focus on reading! You can check out our other related article which deals with key tips on how to study smart.