How To Stay Focused

 

How to stay focused. Imagine this….. you’re sitting at home with a coffee in one hand, and a pen in the other. You’re all settled into your favorite working place with everything ready to focus, and get going when you find yourself sidetracked. Maybe your phone started getting bombarded with notifications. Or maybe you just remembered that one realllllyyyyyy good show your friend was telling you about that one time. Or you just now remembered what you had meant to do about three hours ago. That scenario seems pretty familiar huh? One of the hardest mountains to climb when working from home is that sometimes we get toooooo comfortable. We think it’s okay to scroll through social media when you’re supposed to be checking out your analytics. And we often enough excuse ourselves for doing things that would normally get us fired.  These mindless activities NEED TO STOP. Yet I understand that staying focused can sometimes seem like a mystery. However it doesn’t have to be. So without further ado here are my tips on staying focused. 

 

 

Make an Agenda

A balanced mind makes for a balanced life. My first tip on staying focused is to address the issue that’s stealing your attention. If you feel anxiety then why? Why do you feel so overwhelmed? I can tell you right now that skipping the next fifteen songs on your playlist isn’t going to help and neither is snapchatting your bestie. So what is it? Write it down. If you feel overwhelmed write the to do list for the day, and for the overall week. This will help you visualize everything that you need to do, and this way it relieves some of your anxiety and gives you a guideline on what you have to do today. By giving yourself an agenda you lessen the likeliness of getting sidetracked.

 

Take the Distraction Away!!!

Another tip on staying focused is to identify the distractions and get rid of them. This may be painful for some of us as we have grown so attached to devices like our phones. However this attachment can be extremely dangerous to our work as it’s typically the source of all distractment. Try putting the phone in another room, or using features on the device such as do not disturb or temporarily deleting the apps that are stealing your attention.

Work in Intervals

The last, yet one of the most doable tips is to work in intervals. These intervals can be set to where they work for your working ethic. Typically working intervals are set in increments of time or completed tasks. The purpose of working in intervals is to have a set amount of work or time in which you focus on just your work, with the mindset that if you work for that designated interval, you will reward yourself by having some free time. Setting these boundaries for yourself is very effective as your giving yourself a goal, and positive reinforcement. The only thing you need to watch is that your free time needs to based off of intervals as well so that you are not working for 90 minutes straight, but then on your phone for the rest of the day. A great interval schedule would include you working for 60-90 minutes, and then having leisure time for the next thirty. Make sure if you decide to base the intervals off of time, that you set yourself a timer so that you know how much time you have left, and your not just guessing. 

 

I hope you guys really found this blog helpful! These are just some of the techniques I personally implement into my own work ethic. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or have a great idea make sure you comment on this blog! Also if you guys enjoy the content we bring to you here on Entrepreneur Girl then please make sure you check out our YouTube channel, or channel name is the same as our business. Until next time, this is Alaina Bollen signing out.

 

Author: Alaina Bollen

Created: 04/18/18