We’ve all been there sometimes: staring at the screen, struggling to come up with the right words to write a term paper, an essay or to complete any other writing assignment. There could be many reasons for that struggles (the tiredness, the stress, and so on) - but do they really matter when the words simply don’t want to come to mind?

Probably not. What matters the most is the deadline and the assignment you have. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just boost your brain so you could think clearly again and focus on the assignment?

The good news is that you actually can. Moreover, you can not only do it once but actually improve your brain function for a long time - as long as you’ll continue doing certain things.

So let’s focus on these things that could actually make your brain work better. 

1. Exercises 
Sure, a healthy lifestyle is a thing that could be hard to maintain while you’re still in college. Maybe you don’t have enough time, money, and opportunity to eat healthy all the time. Maybe you don’t always get enough sleep (especially when the end of a semester is near). However, even then you can do the simplest healthy thing ever - exercise. 

You don’t need to buy expensive running shoes or purchase a gym membership. Go for long walks daily, do short morning exercises, and so on. You don’t need a lot of time, space, and money to perform the simplest physical activity - yet if you spend at least 15 minutes a day working out, this will benefit you greatly. 

Physical exercises improve cognition functions, memory, and brain health in general. They could even protect your brain from degeneration if you won’t quit working out over years. 

Moreover, it’s not only physical exercises that matter. You can train your brain as well, using apps like Peak and Lumosity. Such apps are designed specially, allowing you to improve your focus, logic, the ability to react quickly, and so on.

2. Focus 
We get distracted a lot these days. If you have a smartphone (like most of us do), you receive notifications all the time. Your email and your social media are filled with links to various posts and websites, as well with all kinds of content. As you have more things to pay attention to and more tasks to complete, it becomes much harder to concentrate on something for a long period of time. 

That’s why you should work on building up your focus. The good news is that it cannot be done easily - for example, you can turn on productivity timers like 30/30, focusing on a task during a certain time interval. You can also eliminate distractions by installing apps like SelfControl on your Mac or by adding SelfControl plugin n to your Chrome. 

Another thing that improves focus really well as well as boosts brain function is meditation. Even if you haven’t meditated before, you can easily learn how to do so with the help of apps - like Headspace that offers a set of guided meditation for free. Trying to meditate won’t take much of your time as well - 10 minutes a day can be a very good start.

3. Mindset 
Studying and working isn’t always pleasant - and sometimes it’s easy to get caught in this unpleasantness and in your own conflicted feelings in general. Struggling to write a term paper or to come up with some topics for descriptive essays could be extremely hard if you simply don’t feel like doing so. 

However, this is all in your head. Those who go to the gym probably experienced that at some point of their training: it feels like you cannot lift one more time or do enough repetitions, but you just keep doing it - and it turns out you’ve been able to do this after all. 

When we think we are too tired, too unfocused or too sad to continue working, we surely cannot immediately stop feeling all those things - but we still can distract you from them. When you feel caught in own destructive thoughts, do your best to focus on something else for a certain period of time - and these thoughts will go away sooner or later. When you feel too tempted to do something that shouldn’t be done at the moment (for example, go to a party when you need to study or spend some time on social media, because «you have all night ahead of you»), remind yourself that you’re the one who controls your own time. You aren’t a victim of your own schedule and plans - no, you create them and set your priorities right.

Changing your mindset sure isn’t easy, but it’s possible. And the first step to doing this is to realize that’s you can do this in the first place. 

Of course, there are many other tips and tricks that can boost your brain and help you study more effectively as well as to be more effective in your daily life. These three tips are just the main, fundamental ones - and as soon as you master them, you can go looking for new ones. Just don’t stop improving, boosting your brain, and moving forward!