10 Tips On Keeping Focused

Staying focused is a skill that requires practice and determination. With bright shiny objects all around us, some tasks can take us minutes one day while other days they take hours. Being distracted is easy. It doesn’t take any effort and we usually don’t notice how detrimental it is to our productivity until much later.

Have you noticed that when you are working out, especially practicing Yoga or Pilates, that if your thoughts start to waiver you lose proper form and balance? Then you have to work extra hard to regain your focus and correct your form and posture so you don’t hurt yourself (or fall over. Because that’s just embarrassing!). There are many ways focusing impacts our lives, and we like to think that comparing our focus in workouts is very similar to focus in work. Losing your focus in a workout means you may strain a muscle or fall off a treadmill. Losing focus in your work means you may send the wrong email to someone or spend countless hours or days on a project only to realize it isn’t any good.

So we’ve compiled a list of tips to help keep you focused and have even included a few extra tips to keep your business focused!

Let’s get to it:

Mute your inbox: Try and avoid always having your inbox open or responding to emails as quickly as they come in. Others will come to expect that and it’s difficult to undo that expectation.

Silence your phone: Turn off your notifications and silence your phone. This has been one of our biggest game-changers as there’s nothing more distracting than your phone buzzing as you’re working on something important!

Keep your coffee close, and your snacks closer: We love our coffee and our snacks, what can we say! Before getting started on a project or a few tasks that will keep us at our desks for a while, we make sure to bring all of that into the office with us at the beginning.

Close the door (if you can!): We tend to work with our door open most of the time, but when our focus is really required, that door gets shut so that others know to absolutely not interrupt us!

Set the mood: We mean this in the most productive way possible, of course…! We aren’t fans of working in silence, as listening to our keyboards is one of the most annoying sounds. There are plenty of lyric-less playlists out there – and we always have one going. It helps keep us calm and provides that background noise without the distraction of lyrics or voices on a podcast.

Set your intentions: If you have an overwhelming day ahead of you, list it out.

Batch your tasks: After you’ve made your list for the day, batch together tasks that are similar so that the transition between them is less choppy than going from laundry to emails to dishes to content writing – Work Smart!

Set a timer: This may sound silly, but it works! Setting a timer, especially for tasks around the house, makes the time go by faster and you’re likely to get more done in a shorter period of time.

Use an app: Using apps like Asana or Trello can help keep your business tasks organized, reducing the amount of time spent wondering what all you have to do that day. We find it refreshing to open our task list and have everything laid out in front of us. It not only removes the guesswork but limits tasks falling through the cracks.

Scout out what others are doing: If you’re struggling to stay focused and to find a system that truly works for you, look to where others have found success. Gathering other perspectives is a sure-fire way to generate some ideas of where you can improve your systems and focus habits.

Staying focused can be tricky but with a little practice, we can spend less time unfocused on tasks and more time doing what we truly enjoy!

Photo by Mabel Amber from Pexels