I’m sure many people can agree that there are plenty of opportunities to get distracted all day long. Between email, social media, text messages and phone calls it can be very difficult to get any project done. Working with individuals and entrepreneurs who feel overwhelmed just trying to get their daily to-do’s handled, I have discovered that much of the overwhelm stems from these distractions.
A common thread I found, even with myself, was that feeling of overwhelm that starts to creep in when I’m working at the computer and have too many windows or applications open. I began the practice recently that as soon as I started to realize I was losing my focus and would get side-tracked easily, I closed all my windows on my computer, took a quick five minute break, then came back and worked on one thing. Then I felt like I needed to examine how this happens. Starting my day I would just move from task to task, social media, email whatever it was, but I would leave everything open. When I moved on to something else, it allowed me to creep back and get distracted by those open windows. After talking to others I realized many people were doing the exact same thing, so now I’m having them implement this new practice and it is helping us all to FOCUS!
Noises was another area that most were finding difficult to overcome: phones ringing, emails and social media dinging, text messages coming in. This one was easy in theory, turn off all the noise – put the phone on silent, turn off the notifications, right? This one was actually tough because many of us have this gnawing feeling in the back of our mind that we need to look at our phones, email because we’re missing something. When in reality, we aren’t. It can all wait until we’re ready to look at it. New practice here has been to put my phone in another room from where I’m working and it’s amazing how quickly I forgot all about it and FOCUS!
What tips do you have to focus?