how to focus on what you are doing

Focus and concentration can be hard to master. Sure, nigh people want to acquire how to ameliorate focus and boost concentration. But actually doing information technology? We live in a noisy world and constant distractions can make focus difficult.

Luckily, this page contains the best ideas and elevation research on how to go and stay focused. We volition interruption down the science behind sharpening your mind and paying attending to what matters. Whether you're looking to focus on your goals in life or business organization, this page should cover everything you demand to know.

Yous can click the links below to jump to a particular department or merely scroll down to read everything. At the cease of this page, you'll observe a complete list of all the manufactures I have written on focus.

I. Focus: What It Is and How it Works

• What is Focus?
• Why Can't I Focus?
• The Myth of Multitasking

Two. How to Focus and Increment Your Attention Span

• Warren Buffett'south "2 List" Strategy for Focused Attention
• Measure Your Results
• Focus on the Process, Not the Event

Iii. Mind-Hacks for Getting Focused

• How to Improve Concentration
• Where to Become From Here

I. Focus: What Information technology Is and How it Works

Outset things first. What is focus, really? Experts define focus equally the human action of concentrating your interest or activity on something. That's a somewhat slow definition, only at that place is an important insight hiding inside that definition.

What is Focus?

In order to concentrate on one matter you must, by default, ignore many other things.

Hither'south a better way to put it:

Focus can just occur when we have said yep to 1 option and no to all other options. In other words, elimination is a prerequisite for focus. As Tim Ferriss says, "What you don't do determines what you can do."

Of grade, focus doesn't require a permanent no, just it does require a present no. Y'all e'er take the option to do something else after, but in the nowadays moment focus requires that you simply do ane thing. Focus is the key to productivity because proverb no to every other option unlocks your ability to achieve the 1 thing that is left.

Now for the important question: What tin can we do to focus on the things that thing and ignore the things that don't?

Before we talk about how to get started, allow'due south pause for just a 2nd. If you lot're enjoying this article on focus, so you lot'll probably find my other writing on performance and human beliefs useful. Each week, I share self-improvement tips based on proven scientific research through my free email newsletter.

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Why Can't I Focus?

Virtually people don't have problem with focusing. They have trouble with deciding.

What I mean is that near salubrious humans have a brain that is capable of focusing if we go the distractions out of the way. Take you ever had a task that y'all absolutely had to go done? What happened? You got information technology washed considering the deadline fabricated the determination for you. Perchance you lot procrastinated beforehand, but once things became urgent and yous were forced to make a decision, yous took action.

Instead of doing the difficult work of choosing one thing to focus on, we often convince ourselves that multitasking is a better option. This is ineffective.

Here's why…

The Myth of Multitasking

Technically, we are capable of doing two things at the same time. Information technology is possible, for example, to watch TV while cooking dinner or to answer an email while talking on the phone.

What is incommunicable, withal, isconcentrating on two tasks at in one case. You're either listening to the TV and the overflowing pot of pasta is groundwork noise, or you're disposed to the pot of pasta and the Goggle box is background noise. During any unmarried instant, you are concentrating on one or the other.

Multitasking forces your encephalon to switch your focus dorsum and forth very quickly from one chore to another. This wouldn't be a big deal if the human being encephalon could transition seamlessly from one job to the side by side, but it can't.

Have you always been in the center of writing an electronic mail when someone interrupts you? When the conversation is over and y'all become back to the bulletin, information technology takes you a few minutes to become your bearings, remember what y'all were writing, and get dorsum on rails. Something like happens when you multitask. Multitasking forces you lot to pay a mental toll each time you interrupt one task and jump to another. In psychology terms, this mental price is called the switching price.

Switching toll is the disruption in performance that we experience when nosotros switch our focus from one area to another. I study, published in the International Journal of Information Direction in 2003, found that the typical person checks e-mail once every five minutes and that, on average, it takes 64 seconds to resume the previous task after checking your electronic mail.

In other words, because of email alone, we typically waste one out of every six minutes.

The myth of multitasking is that it will make y'all more effective. In reality, remarkable focus is what makes the difference. (Image inspired by Jessica Hagy.)

II. How to Focus and Increase Your Attention Span

Let's talk about how to overcome our tendency to multitask and focus on one thing at a time. Of the many options in front of you, how practise you know what to focus on? How practise yous know where to straight your energy and attention? How exercise you determine theane matter that you should commit to doing?

Warren Buffett's "2 List" Strategy for Focused Attention

One of my favorite methods for focusing your attention on what matters and eliminating what doesn't comes from the famous investor Warren Buffett.

Buffett uses a uncomplicated 3-step productivity strategy to assistance his employees determine their priorities and actions. Y'all may find this method useful for making decisions and getting yourself to commit to doing one thing right abroad. Here'due south how information technology works…

One 24-hour interval, Buffett asked his personal pilot to become through the iii-step do.

Stride 1: Buffett started past asking the pilot, named Mike Flintstone, to write down his elevation 25 career goals. And then, Flint took some time and wrote them down. (Annotation: Yous could also complete this practise with goals for a shorter timeline. For example, write down the top 25 things you want to accomplish this week.)

Footstep 2: Then, Buffett asked Flintstone to review his list and circle his elevation five goals. Over again, Flint took some fourth dimension, fabricated his way through the listing, and eventually decided on his 5 most important goals.

STEP 3: At this point, Flint had ii lists. The v items he had circled were List A, and the 20 items he had non circled were List B.

Flint confirmed that he would showtime working on his top 5 goals correct away. And that's when Buffett asked him about the second listing, "And what about the ones you didn't circumvolve?"

Flint replied, "Well, the superlative v are my primary focus, simply the other xx come in a shut second. They are still important then I'll work on those intermittently as I run across fit. They are not equally urgent, just I withal plan to give them a dedicated effort."

To which Buffett replied, "No. You've got it incorrect, Mike. Everything you didn't circle merely became your Avoid-At-All-Cost list. No matter what, these things get no attending from you until yous've succeeded with your summit 5."

I honey Buffett'due south method because it forces you to make difficult decisions and eliminate things that might be good uses of time, but aren't great uses of fourth dimension. So often the tasks that derail our focus are ones that we tin hands rationalize spending fourth dimension on.

This is simply 1 style to narrow your focus and eliminate distractions. I've covered many other methods before like The Ivy Lee Method and The Eisenhower Box. That said, no matter what method you lot utilize and no matter how committed yous are, at some point your concentration and focus begin to fade. How can you increment your attending span and remain focused?

At that place are two simple steps you can take.

Mensurate Your Results

The first thing yous can do is to mensurate your progress.

Focus frequently fades considering of lack of feedback. Your brain has a natural desire to know whether or not you are making progress toward your goals, and information technology is incommunicable to know that without getting feedback. From a applied standpoint, this means that we need to measure our results.

We all have areas of life that we say are important to us, just that we aren't measuring. That'due south a shame because measurement maintains focus and concentration. The things we mensurate are the things we improve. Information technology is only through numbers and clear tracking that nosotros have any idea if we are getting better or worse.

• When I measured how many pushups I did, I got stronger.
• When I tracked my reading habit of 20 pages per day, I read more books.
• When I recorded my values, I began living with more than integrity.

The tasks I measured were the ones I remained focused on.

Unfortunately, we often avoid measuring because nosotros are fearful of what the numbers volition tell us about ourselves. The pull a fast one on is to realize that measuring is not a judgment about who you are, it's merely feedback on where you are.

Measure to find, to find out, to understand. Mensurate to go to know yourself amend. Measure to encounter if you're really spending fourth dimension on the things that are important to yous. Measure because it volition assist you focus on the things that thing and ignore the things that don't.

Focus on the Process, Not the Event

The second thing you can do to maintain long-term focus is to concentrate on processes, not events. All as well often, we meet success as an event that can exist achieved and completed.

Here are some common examples:

• Many people see health as an event:"If I merely lose 20 pounds, then I'll be in shape."
• Many people see entrepreneurship as an result:"If we could become our business featured in the New York Times, then we'd be fix."
• Many people meet fine art as an outcome:"If I could but become my piece of work featured in a bigger gallery, then I'd take the credibility I need."

Those are just a few of the many ways that we categorize success as a single issue. But if you look at the people who stay focused on their goals, you start to realize that it's not the events or the results that make them unlike. It's the commitment to the process. They autumn in love with the daily practice, not the individual effect.

What'southward funny, of course, is that this focus on the procedure is what will permit you to savour the results anyway.

• If you want to be a swell author, and then having a best-selling book is wonderful. Merely the only way to reach that outcome is to fall in love with the process of writing.
• If you desire the globe to know well-nigh your business, then it would be great to be featured inForbes magazine. Only the but fashion to achieve that result is to fall in love with the process of marketing.
• If you want to be in the all-time shape of your life, then losing 20 pounds might be necessary. But the only way to reach that result is to fall in love with the process of eating healthy and exercising consistently.
• If you want to become significantly ameliorate at anything, you lot take to fall in honey with the process of doing information technology. You accept to autumn in love with building the identity of someone who does the piece of work, rather than merely dreaming about the results that you lot want.

Focusing on outcomes and goals is our natural tendency, simply focusing on processes leads to more than results over the long-run.

Iii. Concentration and Focus Mind-Hacks

Even after you've learned to love the process and know how to stay focused on your goals, the day-to-day implementation of those goals can nevertheless be messy. Let'due south talk about some additional means to better concentration and make sure you're giving each task your focused attention.

How to Amend Concentration

Hither are few additional ways to improve your focus and get started on what matters.

Choose an ballast task. One of the major improvements I've made recently is to assign ane (and simply one) priority to each piece of work 24-hour interval. Although I plan to complete other tasks during the twenty-four hours, my priority job is the 1 non-negotiable thing that must get done. I call this my "anchor task" because information technology is the mainstay that holds the rest of my day in identify. The ability of choosingone priority is that it naturally guides your behavior by forcing yous to organize your life around that responsibility.

Manage your free energy, not your time. If a task requires your total attention, then schedule information technology for a time of twenty-four hours when y'all have the energy needed to focus. For instance, I take noticed that my artistic free energy is highest in the forenoon. That's when I'm fresh. That's when I practise my best writing. That's when I brand the all-time strategic decisions about my business. And so, what do I do? I schedule artistic tasks for the morning. All other business tasks are taken care of in the afternoon. This includes doing interviews, responding to emails, telephone calls and Skype chats, data assay and number crunching. Nearly every productivity strategy obsesses over managing your time better, just time is useless if yous don't have the energy you need to complete the task you are working on.

Never cheque e-mail before apex. Focus is about eliminating distractions. Email tin exist one of the biggest distractions of all. If I don't bank check electronic mail at the beginning of the day, then I am able to spend the morning pursuing my own agenda rather than reacting to everybody else's calendar. That'southward a huge win considering I'm not wasting mental energy thinking nearly all the letters in my inbox. I realize that waiting until the afternoon isn't feasible for many people, but I'd like to offer a challenge. Can you look until 10AM? What about 9AM? 8:30AM? The exact cutoff time doesn't matter. The point is to carve out time during your morning when y'all tin can focus on what is most important to yous without letting the rest of the world dictate your mental state.

Exit your telephone in another room. I usually don't see my phone for the first few hours of the day. It is much easier to do focused work when y'all don't take whatsoever text letters, phone calls, or alerts interrupting your focus.

Work in full screen mode. Whenever I employ an application on my computer, I use full screen mode. If I'm reading an article on the web, my browser takes up the whole screen. If I'm writing in Evernote, I'm working in total screen style. If I'chiliad editing a picture in Photoshop, it is the only matter I can come across. I take prepare my desktop so that the card bar disappears automatically. When I am working, I can't see the fourth dimension, the icons of other applications, or whatsoever other distractions on the screen. It's funny how big of a difference this makes for my focus and concentration. If you lot tin can see an icon on your screen, and then yous volition be reminded to click on it occasionally. However, if you remove the visual cue, then the urge to be distracted subsides in a few minutes.

Remove all tasks that could distract from early morning focus. I dear doing the near important affair starting time each day because the urgencies of the mean solar day have not crept in yet. I have gone a piffling far in this regard in that I take fifty-fifty pushed my first meal off until about noon each day. I have been intermittent fasting for three years now (here are some lessons learned), which means that I typically swallow most of my meals between 12PM and 8PM. The result is that I get some additional time in the forenoon to practice focused piece of work rather than cook breakfast.

Regardless of what strategy you use, simply remember that anytime y'all detect the earth distracting you lot, all y'all need to do is commit to one thing. In the start, yous don't fifty-fifty have to succeed. You merely need to become started.

Where to Go From Here

I promise y'all found this short guide on focus useful. If yous're looking for more than ideas on how to improve your focus and concentration, feel complimentary to scan the full list of articles beneath.

All Focus Articles

This is a complete list of articles I have written on focus. Enjoy!

• The Ultimate Productivity Hack is Saying No
• How Experts Figure What to Focus On
• Zanshin: Learning the Art of Attention and Focus From a Legendary Samurai Archer
• Warren Buffett's "2 List" Strategy: How to Maximize Your Focus and Chief Your Priorities
• How to Get Your Brain to Focus on What Matters
• How to Stay Focused When You lot Become Bored Working Toward Your Goals
• How to Focus and Concentrate Meliorate

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Source: https://jamesclear.com/focus

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