Have you ever had a day when you felt like you had a million things going on at once and at the end of the day, you felt nothing was accomplished?
It’s so frustrating! Modern life and business is so fast-paced, compounded by most of us planning a lot more than can realistically be achieved in 1 day!
This leads to overwhelm on a regular basis and the desire to accomplish it all leaves us frustrated.
Here are 8 ways to help you focus and get things done…
1. Be interested.
It might seem like a stretch to be interested in something mundane but even the most routine task involves extraordinary co-ordination. If you had to consciously think about every finger movement or bend of the elbow, you’d never get anything done! Just being aware of and appreciating this can bring your task into intense focus.
You can find many points of interest in any activity. Challenge yourself to do that.
2. Remove the electronic devices.
You can survive without your phone or laptop for a while. We are so conditioned to instantly jump at beck and call from these devices that we forget: they have an off button, and we are all entitled to answer when it is convenient for us.
3. Be an early bird.
Use the early hours of the morning to do your best thinking. There are less distractions in the morning, especially the mental distractions that intensify throughout the day.
4. Clear your workspace.
A clutter-free workspace will help keep you focused.
5. Do not multi-task.
Multi-tasking developed as a way of coping with overwhelm. However, multi-tasking only accomplishes two things:
- Poor work: your brain likes to focus on one thing at a time, and every time you switch tasks you lose time thinking where you left off with this other thing. Details fall through the cracks and you may find yourself having to correct errors later.
- Stress: because even as you work on two things simultaneously, you have in the back of your mind that there are seventeen other things you have to do…
The solution to multi-tasking is to become a deliberate single-tasker. Make it clear to everyone that you prefer quality over quantity and you will only do one thing at a time, with excellence.
6. Prioritise.
You have twenty two urgent things to do. The question is, are they important, or just urgent? There’s a difference!
Write down a to do list every day and give most of your energy to the 20% on that list that is truly important AND urgent. Then move on to “important but not urgent”… then on to “urgent but not important,” and forget about what is unimportant and not urgent.
7. Meditate.
Taking time to stop the mental chatter during the busiest day is essential.
Taking 15 minutes to meditate will relax you and help you recharge mentally and physically. These moments of “being and not doing” make you more productive, since meditation trains your mind to have singular focus. (check out http://www.omharmonics.com/lp)
8. Tell yourself you can focus.
Never say, “I can’t focus” or “I’m easily distracted.” Use the power of self-talk to direct your mind in the right way. Tell yourself, “I can focus,” and “It’s easy for me to shut out distractions.”
