How to stay focussed at work [updated]

Rather have audio? Listen the podcast: 6 great tips on how to stay focussed at work. https://anchor.fm/fpptheentrepreneurcreator/episodes/6-great-tips-on-how-to-stay-focussed-at-work-e4s3l7

How to stay focused at work?

In today’s world there are so many things that can cause us to lose our focus. You can get disrupted, interrupted, your mind can be wandering off, you get tired, and so many more distractions. But for you to work effectively, you have to be focused. Focus is one of the most important tools at our disposal to achieve our goals. It helps us be productive, more goal-oriented, fast and efficient. When you’re not focused, you definitely can’t produce the quality of work necessary to be successful.

With that being said, here are 6 ways to stay focused, or to get back into focus if you’ve lost it:

Interruption:

Interruptions are evil! It takes the brain up to 45 minutes to reach its full capacity and full focus. if you’re interrupted, it resets to zero. Imagine you get interrupted every 5 or 10 minutes. You’ll never reach that full potential. So, you better work on limiting interruptions and distractions. I have two easy tricks for you:

1- Chunking: Put together similar pieces of work into one larger chunk. For example, 5 calls of 10 minutes, which are sales calls, make up 50 minutes. That is enough time to get into the swing of it and reach your highest level of focus, causing you to manage those calls faster, and with better outcomes.

2- Your phone: After you’re done with those sales calls, put it away. And I don’t mean just down on your desk, but actually in a place where you can’t see it. The reason why, is the fact that seeing your phone on the desk distracts your brain and you cannot focus properly.

Sitting is the new smoking:

Even after just ten minutes of sitting down, your body starts to experience negative health effects. Why is that? To understand that, you need to know there are two different systems in your body. On the one hand it’s the blood system that transports oxygen and energy into your body. And on the other hand, is the lymphatic system, which is basically the sewage of your body; it’s transporting away all the bad stuff. But this sewage system is being pumped by your muscles, not the heart. In other words, no movement, no sewage.
An easy way to improve your movement, is for example, when you’re having your phone call, you can stand up and move around during the call. Which has the added benefit that you breathe more deeply and therefore your voice is stronger and more convincing.
Another fun and easy trick would be swapping your chair for a huge ball to sit down on.

That would actually require you to use your muscles in order to keep your posture, which leads to healthy movement, that you’d benefit from extremely by enhancing the quality of your work.

 

Hydration:

Hydration is extremely crucial to maintain your focus. If your body gets dehydrated, you start feeling negative side effects. You start to have urges for that chocolate bar or the bag of fries, but maybe you’re just dehydrated. You suddenly start to get a headache, maybe you’re just dehydrated. You have the impression, your brain is slightly foggy, and you operate at 50% of its capacity, maybe you’re just dehydrated. Make sure that you drink a lot of water. Maybe a little flavored with lemon to make it a bit more fun. And the best way to remind yourself to drink is to keep a big bottle in front of you, so you’ll always see it and be reminded of it and have a glass next to it so you could easily take the sips. But don’t wait until you’re thirsty, because then it’s too late.

Eyecare:

If your eyes are tired, you get tired. If you’re tired, you start losing your focus. Especially in today’s environment, where you have lots of screens and many people spend a long part of the day watching that screen. Looking at a screen, leads to less blinking, so your eyes dry out. So, try to make a conscious effort to blink regularly.
The second part is the focal distance. The screen is two and a half meters away, but the human body is made to look into the far distance. So, every five or ten minutes you should look up and look into the distance to give a different focus to your eye.
And thirdly, if you’re tired in the evening and you have this slightly headache with is on top of your eyes, you should start thinking about whether you need glasses or not. It doesn’t mean you can’t see properly. A little effect means that your eyes can readjust, but it also means that they’re working hard all the time. Which also happened to me, and once I got my glasses, everything changed, and I was fit and full of energy throughout the day.

Breathing:

Breathing is such a natural thing that many people forget the importance and the implications of proper breathing for your levels of energy and therefore for your focus and concentration. Look at how you sit down, maybe you slouch a little bit forwards, look at your laptop. Your lungs are compressed, your diaphragm can’t really extract. So, what you’re doing is breathing just shallowly on the top of your lungs. In order to be more energetic, you need to breathe deeply in through your nose, deep into your diaphragm, into your belly, and out again. Repeat that a few times, and you’ll be more energetic right on the spot.

Workout:

Many people would agree, that a short workout could work wonders on your energy level and boost your concentration on your focus. However, some people may have the excuse, “it’s too time consuming, you need to get changed, and I can’t do that during my work time.” Other might say, “I can do that at work, but it may look a little bit weird if I start to do some squats and push-ups and maybe some pullups in the middle of the office.” But there’s a third way, and the solution is called isometric exercises. What you basically do, is isolate and just flex your muscles. You check out a certain group of muscles, flex your muscles and then leave that again.

Integrated as much as possible of those daily exercises and habits into your day, will lead to having an elevated source of energy, which would have a positive effect on your focus. And since your focus would be increased, then everything you do at work will be done faster, and with higher quality.