Brain & Focus
How to improve your reaction time
Reaction time is the gap between a signal and your response — a light turns, you brake; a ball moves, you catch. It's partly fixed by biology, but a surprising amount is within your control.
What slows you down
1Poor sleep — the single biggest, most reversible factor.
2Divided attention — you can't react fast to something you're only half watching.
3Fatigue and dehydration, which quietly blunt processing speed all day.
Half of “slow reflexes” is really slow attention. Fix what you notice and you fix what you do.
How to get faster
Protect your sleep first; nothing else comes close. Then practise deliberately: tasks that demand a quick, correct response train both the seeing and the deciding. Games like Speed Tap and Go/No-Go in Cognito isolate that loop — react fast, but only to the right cue — and a few minutes a day sharpens the everyday version of the skill.
