How to stay focused…one of the most common challenges that everyone who’s striving to achieve anything in life has to deal with…
Whether it’s growing your business, learning a new skill, training for a sports event or losing weight, everyone wants to know how to stay focused.
I have to be honest here, and admit that this is one of my biggest challenges, and I’ve spent a lot of time learning and implementing techniques on how to deal with this, so that I can be more productive.
As a business coach, I’ve really had to discipline myself in this area, so that I can help my own clients to do the same – with some integrity.
How to stay focused – why is it so difficult?
Well there are loads of reasons, but an average person is said to have over 60,000 thoughts a day, so for starters there’s enough of a distraction there to stop anyone from staying focused!!
We lead really busy lives. One of the most common difficulties I see people having is being ‘present’ wherever they are. One of the biggest reasons for lack of focus is that when people are working, they’re thinking about what they need to be doing at home…and oftentimes when they’re supposed to be relaxing or spending quality time with their children, they’re thinking about work and what they have or haven’t got done.
Even in work situations, they’re not ‘present’ with the task at hand…they’re thinking about the hundred other things that need to given attention. They’re re-acting to everything around them – employees, ringing phone, tenders, texts, emails, customers etc. – and not being ‘proactive’ about how their time needs to be spent. They’re really, really ‘busy’…but oftentimes, not making any really progress beyond getting through each day and each week.
Tips on how to get focused
- Establish what’s the end result that you want, and document what has to happen for you to achieve that. There may be a few different areas in your life, but focus on one primary goal for each area e.g. business, health, personal relationships
- Identify the different roles that you have in your life and allocate daily and weekly time based on this…e.g. you may have a role as a business owner, a tradesperson, a mother/father, son/daughter, runner, friend, charity worker etc. Work out if these are daily, weekly or monthly roles and allocate time accordingly. This is important in order to achieve ‘balance’ in your life and to ensure that you’re not neglecting any of your roles.
- Work out what are the daily actions that you have to take to achieve your goal. Remember that there are going to be more actions to take than time in the day, so you will have to prioritise…what specific actions are going to get you the results you want? What are you going to have ‘stop’ doing or ‘sacrifice’ to start working on your long term goals?
- Create a timetable and schedule time against the daily actions that need to be taken.
- Get a timer, and use it to monitor your ‘start’ times and remind you of your ‘finish’ times.
- If you don’t complete the task in the scheduled time, move onto the next task. This helps increase your awareness, and will ensure that you focus even better the next time you do that particular task.
- If you have time at the end of your working schedule, complete anything that’s unfinished, or reevaluate if you’re assigning enough time to it.
- Spend some quiet time each morning thinking about what it will feel like to achieve your particular goal – this can be in the form of meditation, visualization or simply sitting in a quiet place reflecting on what you need to achieve today to bring you a few steps closer to achieving that goal.
- The biggest change for me has been creating boundaries around my working times and where I work. Prior to this, my work and home life were ‘morphed’ together.
- I’m finding that I‘m far more productive, and when I’m not working, I’m truly recharging. I hope you’ve found some value in this post and it will also help with staying focused.
- If you’d like some help with making the changes to improve both your own performance and that of your business, apply for a complimentary Business Strategy Session.
https://aileengallagher.com/business-strategy-session-application-form/