Focus at work

The problem with focus is that you can’t take a pill or install an app to make yourself concentrate harder on the work in front of you. But you can, through habit adjustments and environmental changes, train yourself to focus more efficiently. In this article, we will to show you some effective ways for how to focus at work. With these strategies and approaches, you should find yourself in a better position to stay focused at work.

The first step in any focus improvement effort is establishing a way to analyze your performance. Why? Because that which gets measured gets improved. There are a variety of tools that can help you do this, such as one of these productivity apps for focus and distraction elimination. With these, you’ll be able to measure how many tasks you’re completing and how much work you’re getting done. Even the most focused worker sometimes has to deal with distracting thoughts. You’ll think about a movie you plan to watch this weekend, or an item you have to pick up from the grocery store.

When these thoughts appear, most people do one of two things; they either chase the thought, distracting themselves and heading on a new tangent, or they dismiss the thought, chastising themselves from getting distracted in the first place.

A better approach is to allow and then quarantine these distracting thoughts. For example, if you’re curious to look up information about that movie, write down the title so you can look it up later, or if you remember an item to get at the grocery store, write it down and move on.

This is a good way to bring closure to the thought, and allow yourself to explore it in the future, without letting it detract from your current focus. Most professionals fall into the trap of thinking multitasking can save time. In reality, it compromises the integrity and efficiency of every task you’re trying to accomplish simultaneously. Whether you’re checking your email during a meeting or trying to finish a project while holding a conversation with a colleague, learn to recognize when you’re multitasking and cut it out.

It takes up to 23 minutes to fully recover your focus after being distracted, meaning even a few-seconds-long instance of losing your attention can result in a massive disruption in your efficiency.

There are some distractions you won’t be able to help, but notifications should be squarely in your control. These incessant, ubiquitous alerts will destroy your focus over the course of a day as you get new emails, new instant messages, and get notified of new changes on your group projects. If and when possible, turn your notifications off altogether.

If not possible, try to turn them off during select periods of time (so you can focus on a central task), and limit the number of notifications you receive. One of the best ways to improve focus at work is to minimize interruptions. If you’re trying to focus on a specific project, make adjustments to your work environment so that interruptions simply aren’t a possibility. For example, if people in your office frequently stop by your desk to ask questions or make small talk, shut the door to your office or hole yourself up in a private meeting room. If you work remotely, work at your home office instead of a noisy café. Most of us are at least occasionally distracted by popular time-wasting websites like Facebook or Reddit. Without even consciously realizing it, you might click on one of these bookmarks and spend several minutes browsing in the middle of a work assignment.

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