You arrived at the office, got a coffee, and start listing to-do tasks for today. But you got an email, after reading it you reached for the phone and checked a social media. It takes 15 minutes of your time, and it will repeat several times during your workday.
When you get back to your daily tasks, you don’t know where you left off with your job.
Does this sound familiar to you?
It’s a routine that we all have in the morning. And it is hard to stay focused all the time when there are a vast number of distractions we couldn’t ignore.
To achieve that, you need to tunnel your motivation into a specific task and stay concentrated. Still, you can’t just shut down a world until you finalized your work. And be focused for the next 6 or 8 hours.
“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.”
Zig Ziglar
It may sound like an impossible mission.
Yet, If you change those little things that distract you and invest in a better organization of your work – you can achieve a high level of focus.
Training yourself, you can change and adapt to a noisy office, creating a productive and effective work environment.
Undivided attention is hard to achieve, among colleagues, meetings, and constant notification on email or other communication channels.
Studies have shown that there are several things you need to exclude during a daily office routine.
Interactions with colleagues are the biggest distractor when it comes to focusing. The point is to learn how to overcome unwanted distractors.
Here are a few ideas of which habits you need to combine toward creating a highly focused work routine.
We’re going to start with the most obvious, but the hardest habit to achieve.
#1 A clear vision of your goals
In the chaos of daily tasks that occupy our work capacity, it’s incredibly hard to stay focus on the primary goal.
Training yourself to have a clear vision all the time, where all of these tasks lead, you will have a broader viewpoint. Achieving an inner motivation to work even more toward a final goal.
Every day make a list of what your primary task is and all the steps you need to complete.
When you start this routine, you will see that your motivation will increase, followed by an incredible feeling of satisfaction.
Focus on today – and do everything you can to achieve your maximum toward a primary daily goal.
“That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
Steve Jobs
#2 Organize your work
When you have sharped your focus to finding a primary goal and clear your vision.
It would be best if you organized yourself to have all the information under a single platform.
Prioritizing your work is just the beginning of a journey. Now you need to follow up with all team members’ timelines, task deadlines, and the project overview in general.
The best way is to invest in project management software tools.
Advanced techniques of these tools will help you tremendously.
Consider using some of the most innovative project management software for a project overview, which specially designed a complete task, milestone, and team overview.
Train yourself to use tech software tools that will do hard work for you.
Organizing your work will sharpen your focus by having all of the processes controlled and easy to monitor in real-time.
“Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.”
Tony Robbins
#3 Learn to ignore distractions
Noise is the biggest distraction you need to learn how to ignore.
The first thing to do is to stop that impulse to react to an unusual noise. This reaction is a stumbling point for your focus and workflow.
If you are sensitive to surrounding sounds, try some of the noise-cancel headphones to achieve an intense focus.
As you start working on it, you will see all the benefits of momentum that a high focus can bring.
“One look at an email can rob you of 15 minutes of focus. One call on your cell phone, one tweet, one instant message can destroy your schedule, forcing you to move meetings.”
Jacqueline Leo
#4 Use the power of 5-minute brakes
Mental capacity is essential for focus. Like every other high intense work, focus drow your energy. And it would help if you consider an energy refill every 20-30 minutes.
Use these 5-minute brakes to achieve quick energy charge of mental capacity, also use this pauses to check your email quickly, go to the bathroom, refill a coffee, etc.
Working in 20-30 minute chunks using 5-minute brakes between will sharpen your focus, and you will feel not exhausted as before.
Learn to divide your time and let your mental capacities to recover.
#5 Art of habituation
Habituation is a learning process that allows you to decrease alertness of your brain to unimportant information.
You can train your brain to ignore a repeated stimulation that has no practical use for you. A great example is how quickly you can adapt to office sounds, as they are unimportant for your work. Our brain categorizes them as something you don’t need to pay attention to.
Use this incredible hack of your brain, and in that way, your focus will not be disturbed. And your productivity will rise.
Conclusion
In the end, creating a habit is a complicated job to do. And it would be best if you had constant monitoring and adjustment of your work behavior.
Creating a highly productive focus, have in mind that you need to shut down all of the distractors and organize your work in such a way to create a stimulating work environment.
And what is stopping you from starting right now?
Leave your comfort zone. Keep in mind that every change in your routine, your brain will recognize as a potential danger.
Reach out, increase your productivity, and achieve a laser-sharp focus!
What is the office habit you consider the most important to increase a focus and a workflow in general?
Please, leave a comment!
