How to stay more focused became a mega-important question in the lives of millions of people. Undoubtedly many of us can agree that we experience difficulties with concentration like we never had before.
More and more we have a tendency to jump from subject to subject and forget what we were about to do or say just a minute ago. And everyone can recall how tedious it becomes to read a book when with absurd consistency we are rereading the same paragraph over and over again.
As our attention span is only getting shorter, the demand for individuals who can stay focused on their goals becomes bigger.
But how come we all of a sudden turned ADD with our minds becoming so scattered? And more importantly, what can we do to gain control back over the direction of our thoughts and intentions?
WHY IS IT HAPPENING?
The insane speed of the world we live in is the answer.
Buzzing notifications, messages and calls, that imply immediate response, social media and marketing, – all that bombards us nonstop, promising happiness in the forms of things, services, or experiences.
Add constant FOMO, that throws us from one thing to another. And as a result, we squander the opportunity to invest our attention into quality something.
Besides that, the unbelievable opportunity of our day and age to have access to anything in one click also comes with a downside – we start to question our own life and doubt the choices we make.
Not only we became unable to perform simple daily and work tasks, but we also compromised our well-being, peace of mind and happiness.
BUT WHY DO WE NEED TO STAY FOCUSED ANYWAY?
First of all, for the sake of setting and achieving day-to-day tasks. How can we ever be productive in our jobs or in our personal endeavors when we have an attention span of a goldfish?
Secondly, for global reasons. Let’s agree that if you don’t choose life goals and don’t follow them, the chances are high that you will flounder alone in the sea of overwhelming life dilemmas without any clear direction in which to move.
By spreading our attention sporadically we are wasting our life. Because let’s be clear life happens only when you are focused in the present moment. The past has gone, the future is never arriving, and NOW is all we have.
So if your NOW consists of trivial fragments of unfiltered reality, then you are in danger to wake up one day an old person and wonder where did your life go. Indeed a very sad realization!
So, let’s slow down and give our undivided attention to whatever we are doing right now. And let’s deliberately choose WHAT we need to focus upon.
So, how can we do it?
HOW TO STAY FOCUSED AND CONCENTRATED ON YOURSELF AND YOUR GOALS
1. Meditate
The first and the best thing you can do to improve focus is to adopt the habit of meditation.
There are countless scientifically proven benefits of meditation on human life. While physical exercise is used to maintain your body healthy, meditation is a brain workout designed to keep your mind sane.
Many so-called “gurus” overcomplicate meditation making it scary and unapproachable for normal earthly people, like us.
In reality, meditation is simple and available for anyone at any time and doesn’t require years of devoted practice in an ashram.
To start, find any short (5-15 minutes) guided meditation that resonates with you and implement it in your daily schedule (here’s the meditation I did yesterday).
Don’t overthink it. There is nothing to analyze, there are no progress charts or improvement scores that you have to strive towards, it is just about practicing it.
Think of it as a special time, during which you slow down and focus on what is actually happening to you and around you at that particular moment. That’s all.
2. Spend More Time Outside
Connecting with nature can do wonders for your ability to stay focused. Daylight, fresh air, and the spaciousness of surroundings all contribute to the diminishing of the background noise and anxiety associated with it.
If at some point in your day, you feel overwhelmed and become unable to keep your goals in sight, take an outside break. Stroll in the park, play with the dog, or walk to a nearby coffee shop to get your brain restarted.
As counterintuitive as it sounds, the more breaks you will have during whatever project you work on the more effective and productive your end result will be.
3. Make a Plan
You want to approach the new day with the plan in your hands. Otherwise, without an exact strategy as the day goes by you will start losing the direction of your focus.
Making an outline of your true priorities the night before also helps to calm anxiety. Meaning you can enter a new day with the confidence of knowing exactly what to do.
It is the feeling of having control (or at least the illusion of it) that helps us sleep well at night.
Once you transferred your hectic thoughts and ideas into the paper, you obtained clarity of vision. And this is a very pleasant and calming feeling.
4. Stop Multitasking
With a long list of important to-dos in front of you, it is very hard not to get overwhelmed. The initial instinct is to attack as much as you can with multitasking. But stay calm and ignore the panic inside of you.
Start with just one and give this task your undivided attention. Commit to working on it as much as you can before moving on.
When you share your energy among several things at the same time you divide your attention even more. It takes away from the quality of your work in general, meaning the results are not satisfying and you end up wasting your time.
Also, we are more likely to forget more things as our short-term memory get impacted when we multitask. And as the result, we become unable to concentrate even more.
5. It's OK Though to Switch Tasks
It is important to listen to yourself and stay connected to your body. If you feel that you are stuck and can’t squeeze anything else from whatever you are doing, move on to something else.
Sometimes when you come back later to the same piece of work you receive a fresh perspective and you can be then more productive.
6. Do the Creative Work First
When you decide where should you begin, think of smart energy distribution. That means instead of splitting your effort towards a bunch of small assignments, start right away with the task that requires maximum intellectual effort and creativity.
Everyone has the time of the day when they are the sharpest. So use it to your advantage, by doing the hardest work then.
My personal peak of the keenest concentration is very early in the day. Since my writing demands freshness of thoughts and lots of creativity, mornings became the prime time for it.
And as my day goes by and my mental energy shifts, I gradually move to the tasks that require less creativity and more mechanical labor.
7. Minimize Phone Distractions and Retrain Your Brain
No doubt, our phones are the biggest distractors. Whether we are studying or working it is almost impossible to stay focused on a task when every minute our phone goes off. Calls, messages, notifications, reminders, alarms – try one day to calculate the amount of unnecessary attention you give them during your work day.
It looks like phones conditioned us and the direction of our thoughts is dictated by them. Certainly, it becomes our job to retrain ourselves by returning the focus back under our own control.
In order to organize the usage of your phone, you must create rules. Otherwise, you will never go too far in your progress.
You can
- Turn off notifications
- Use ‘silent’ and ‘away’ modes
- Dedicate time windows for checking emails and messages
- Limit social media usage
In addition, make your distractions conscious by intentionally stopping yourself each time you automatically reach for the phone. Become aware of this move and ask yourself: Is it really important and urgent or is it just a force of habit? (more about adopting life-changing habits is here)
8. Work Can and Should be Fun
As adults, we forget how much fun we had when we were kids. We put our serious faces on and carry on with our important grownup lives.
It is sad because the last time I checked FUN wasn’t canceled. And it is still legal to practice for any American citizen, including adults. So why are you missing out?
Guess what, the best way to achieve amazing concentration in anything you do – is to make it interesting and entertaining for yourself. By using your imagination you can tweak the approach you take while doing things and make it fun.
In order to make my writing routine more interesting on occasion I pretend I am a teacher or an expert writer who proofreads my drafts and corrects them.
Or I like to collect beautiful and unusual word combinations and phrases. And then I play game trying to interweave them in my own sentences.
Often we are so hung up on achieving goals that we completely disregard the process, like it’s non-important. But the process, if you think about it, – is what constitutes our life. It IS the life, actually.
And when you cross your next task off your to-do list, you actually cross off a part of your life that just happened. But have you noticed it? Were you present there?
9. Stand For Yourself and Your Progress
Whether or not we can keep ourselves concentrated and focused is closely related to how we see yourselves positioned in this world, how much we compare ourselves with others, and to what extent we are minding anybody else’s business.
Achieving results in anything requires consistency and concentration in one direction. It almost takes a talent or a skill to stay attentive to whatever you doing. And it takes a strong and assertive personality to stay immune to whatever others do or say.
You can choose to participate in the completion that most people got sucked into. You can choose to race in the ocean of changes that happen at the speed of light, dedicate your life to following up and keeping up with the newest trends.
Or you can stop consult “the others” in search for approval and stop questioning your identity. You can focus on who you are and what you want and recognize your worth.
Training yourself to withstand strong civilizational press will make you more resilient and focused. Standing for yourself and your choices will set you free and will single you out in the world of lost and confused copy cats. And by moving assertivly down your own alley your authenticity will eventually inspire others.
