One of the key challenges I often hear around time management is maintaining focus on tasks which must be completed. Despite your best intentions, you just can’t concentrate. We’ve all been in this familiar, frustrating situation, and it’s something that can really undermine your performance.
Below are some strategies that will help you improve your concentration and reduce your daily distractions.
Nutrition
Follow some simple nutritional tips:
Drink water – Many of us don’t think about drinking water while we’re at work, yet dehydration can make us feel tired, irritable or slow, or even sick. When our brains don’t have enough fluid, they can’t operate at peak performance. Staying hydrated is an easy way to help improve your concentration during the day.
Eat breakfast – The most important meal of the day! It’s much harder to concentrate when you’re hungry, so eat a well balanced meal before you go to work. You can also help your concentration throughout the day by keeping healthy snacks at your desk. Almonds, fresh fruit, and vegetables are good choices.
Get up and move around – Ensure at least every 90 mins you get up and walk around Research has shown that regular walking can help increase your focus during the day.
Mindset
Some simple tips to maintain a positive mindset:
Focus on one task at a time – Don’t interrupt your flow to answer emails, send text messages, or take quick phone calls. Some researchers believe that it can take up to 15 minutes for us to regain complete focus after a distraction.
Limit distractions– Close your office door or put up a “Do Not Disturb” sign to let colleagues know you need to focus, or of you want to operate an open door policy, then consider working from home or from elsewhere.
Switch between high- and low-attention tasks – This can give your brain a rest after heavy concentration. For instance, if you spend two hours working on your company’s budget, you’ll probably feel tired afterward. You can recharge your energy by working on a low-attention task, like filing, for 15 minutes before going back to your budget.
Prioritise – Having too much to do can be distracting, and this sometimes causes procrastination. Or, you may quickly jump from task to task, creating the illusion of work – but in reality, you’re not accomplishing very much. If you’re not sure where to start take 10 mins to step back and plan.
A few more tips
Take short breaks – Our minds can struggle to focus intensely on tasks for eight hours a day. This is where it can be better to divide your work into one-hour segments, with a 5–10 minute break between tasks. This short break will allow your mind to rest before focusing again.
Do your hardest tasks when you’re most alert (or eat a frog for breakfast)– This will help you maximise your concentration.
Reward yourself – For instance, make a rule that if you focus intensively for 45 minutes on one task, you can take a break to get a cup of coffee when you’re done. Little “self-rewards” can often be great motivators.
Turn off email – It can be tremendously distracting to have emails pinging into your inbox every few minutes – you’re tempted to stop what you’re doing, and answer them right away. If you can, schedule your email to download only a few times each day, and deal with all of your emails at set times.
