How to Focus: Easy Steps to Help You Concentrate
How to Focus? Has there been a time in your life when you were not able to put your mind to the task at hand? We are together in this. To be able to achieve anything tangible in whatever field you choose to venture in you must be able to do a task for a period of time and put in the hours.
You must train your mind to concentrate and be able to do deep work.
Focus is the ability to do a single task for a period of time and stopping only when you are done and not when bored, tired.
An illustration is when you decide to finish Who Moved My Cheese you sit down and get up only when you have reached the end of that interesting book.
Our lack of focus is the root cause of failure in today’s century. Why? Simply put, productivity is directly proportional to your ability to focus.
When we master concentration than our output in the long-run increases in quality and quantity.
Our ability to concentrate is influenced by a number of factors differing from age to the health status of the individual.
How to Focus Better
The human mind has a concentration span of eight seconds which is lower than that of a goldfish!
Indicating that for you to be able to get anything done we must force our brains to stay put since we can accomplish very little within the concentration span that we have by default.
To help us improve our focus we must get to the factor number one which is why, why do you need to focus, why is the completion of the task important, what do you gain after the completion of the task.
These are the vital key questions that must be answered in our heads if we are to get things done.
You could scribble the answers down before we move. It’s equally important to know the distractions, is it your phone, social media, a colleague, random wild thoughts at times it could be a distraction that works like a switch button this is what really distracts me.
I can concentrate for 20 minutes then suddenly I start doing other things for like 5 minutes then I get back to what I was working on then I get distracted again at the end of the day I end up completing the task yes but after spending eight hours on a task that I would have spent six hours on.
Exercises to Help You Concentrate
To keep your attention span long enough to do things you must put in deliberate efforts to stay focused. Here are some tips with a scene-setting of student x who needs to complete an essay:
Establish a Goal
Clearly establish the goal of the task. This will give you a substantial reason to stay put as the importance of the task and will guide you.
Student x, the goal will be to complete the essay before the next day.
Okay, so why should the essay be completed, possibly to avoid getting in trouble at school, to practice essay writing skills taught in class and to show off the neat handwriting recently mastered.
After this has been established. Now that the most vital part has been established let us proceed.
Choose the Right Place to Work
Get a place to work from. This is in regard to the task and it depends on the task. It should be a place where all the materials needed can be accessed easily.
It should be well ventilated with comfortable seats and ensure you sit at 90 degrees to avoid straining your back.
Your desk should be free from unnecessary objects which most likely will act as destruction.
Before you start working ensure you have had something to eat as hunger is a big deal. Student x would thus need to sit at the dining table and get the dictionary, thesaurus, and the internet on standby.
Pen and paper go without saying.
Remove Distractions
We had already discovered the possible destructions thus keep your phone away from you and in silent mode.
Log out of your social media accounts( for real) if you are in the office you could ask your colleagues to avoid interrupting you for a while because you must pay attention to some really key stuff.
Schedule Your Breaks
You do not want to get bored sitting down plus old habits die hard.
Lack of focus will not be overcome in an instant thus you need to break at regular intervals.
This has to be after 30 minutes say you take a short break for 10 minutes each and check your phone real fast, take some water or respond to a query.
Student x would take the opportunity for the break and stretch, get food bite a sandwich then get back.
It’s important to have this timing stated clearly, from start to end and with the breaks clearly highlighted.
Reward Yourself
This is very key in motivation and it goes a long way. It should be done with a high mastery of self-discipline.
This could be in the simple tasks that you love but you deliberately keep off for the purpose of rewarding yourself.
An ice cream lover like student x will self deprived himself of ice cream and eat only when the essay is complete.
This will make you look forward to something after the completion of the task.
With that, you are now ready to start working and concur your workday with the aim of minimizing your input in regards to time.
Related Articles
Avoid Procrastination
Deep procrastination which mostly affects students, who are not able to start an assignment at all.
Adults also get into the cycle of procrastination but mostly at the level of personal growth. Thus for this content to be of benefit, we must conclude on procrastination.
Procrastination reasons are closely related to the distractions we earlier spoke about. See your phone will distract you and you procrastinate the task and start scrolling through your phone.
The reasons why we procrastinate are, in fact, the work of our brains which when not trained default focus on activities that give short term results instead of looking at the long term results.
This explains why at the back of your mind you know that a task needs to be completed but you rather use your phone and enjoy the short term enjoyment of scrolling than the long term fulfillment of completing the task.
SUMMARY
There are so many articles written on focus and most of the time, we have read them.
Breathe deeply and read on. So what is the difference? I bet 90 percent of what you have read here you have come across the same message done with different wordings.
What’s the difference? For this to be of help in your life, you must make a deliberate effort in your mind to actually focus.
Nothing in the present moment or in the past has the power to put focus and concentration in your head but your deliberate effort.
You must choose to focus on it. If up until reading this part you feel equipped to focus then procrastination is the deal and you need to read and implement these five easy steps to help with that.
