The strategy that helped me to improve my focus
When I was doing my “self-analysis” I found that one area that needed improvement was to improve my focus. I found myself being too distracted and I just committed to overcoming this issue. Most people are OK being distracted, but it is very important to understand that the root cause of all your problems and misery is the lack of ability to simply focus on any important task. If you fix this one thing, most of your life will be fixed.
Here are the things that worked for me and I hope it may work for you too -
Controlling Brain Stimulations
Every activity we do generates some amount of feel-good chemicals in our brain and body. Humans tend towards easy instant gratification, but falling prey to this will hurt life in the long run. For example, social media, it's easy — basically, you just scroll and get rewarded and you get hooked to it in the cycle of scroll-reward-scroll! Identify those stimulants and eliminate them from the first part of your day.
If you give your brain highly stimulating activity early in the day then the less stimulating activities get too boring to do.
I have pushed most of my activities that stimulate me to the end of the day that created so much mental space and energy to do the important tasks of the day.
Planning and Scheduling in chunks
I tried experimenting with chunks of time, for me, one chunk of time is 1.5 hours. Example: In the morning, Coffee, Shower, and Prayer are my one chunk, when I start my office work, checking emails, admin tasks, and follow-ups is one chunk of 1.5 hours as soon as I start my work.
The goal of the day is to make as many chunks as possible according to my plan. In other words, by controlling my hours, I am controlling my life the way I want as much as possible.
This is so helpful because if I fail at executing one chunk I can pull myself together to execute the next chunk of time. The more I play with this, the more I understand my abilities.
Reset multiple times a day
Sometimes I lose focus early in the day, sometimes soon after lunch, I am in a slump. This is overcome by resetting myself.
I take a 5 minutes breathing break, I just get up from my work desk and I close my eyes and sit in a corner of another room and just focus on my breathing for 3 to 5 mins and I do nothing else.
I do wash dishes or clean my room or set up my table for 5 to 10 mins that will refresh and reset my brain.
I just do some stretching, it always helps to stretch my back/spine. It not only refreshes and recharges me.
Going for a quick run always helps me to recover from the day’s work and helps me to reset. I usually run in the evening and after running I could focus for few hours in the evening.
These three simple things have helped me to stay focused for longer periods of time and I hope this would help you as well!
Let me know which of these tips helped you and if you have some of your tips then do share them in the comments below.
