HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR FOCUS | 5 EASY PRACTICES

How to improve your focus?

Focus is defined as the concentration and giving attention to one activity and eliminating the other activities. In this article, I'm gonna share with you the ways or practices you can do to improve your focus and increase your productivity. 

Focus is one of the most important attributes that we can develop to be more productive and accomplish our goals with more efficiency. So, let's see what are the ways to fix or improve your focus and be more productive. Let's dive right into it.

CUT DISTRACTIONS.

First, let us know why can't we focus on a given task. The answer is simple - because of the distractions. It has become easier to get distracted in today's world. We all are surrounded by more distractions today than ever before. You are not able to focus on a single task because you are constantly distracted by others.

Let's assume, you finally decided to study for your exam after your father yelled at you 15 times. You finally put your ass up from that bed and put it on your chair in front of the table. You opened up your book and suddenly, a strange sound distracted you. You tried to find out where that sound came from. You found out that it came from your mobile phone. It was a call from that topper friend who said that he never studied. You picked up his call and talked to him for an hour. Distracted and time wasted.

See, if you want to focus on anything, you first need to eliminate all other things (distractions). You would have studied for an hour if you had switched off your phone before you sat down on that chain. If you want to focus, don't have one eye on one task and another eye on another task. Have both your eyes on the one task ahead.

STOP MULTITASKING.

Let us now continue our story. Now you wasted an hour and it's time to sleep. But you somehow decided to sacrifice your sleep and study all night because you listened to a motivational song. Now you have less time, and 3 subjects to study - mathematics, physics, and biology. I don't know what combination this is but let's continue with that. 

Now, you have less time, so you thought that to complete more tasks in less time, you can apply the magic of multitasking. You started to study all three subjects but switched between all three of them from time to time. Time passed and you thought that you studied all three subjects. And when you tried to remember what you studied, you thought, "1560 divided by 12 is equal to Mitochondria." Do you know what the hell happened here?

When you tried to study more than one subject in less time - multitasking, you dispersed your focus on all the three tasks and could not give all of your focus on one subject. Multitasking takes away your focus from one task and you end up not doing any of the tasks with efficiency. You need to stop multitasking and put all of your focus on a single task at a time. Complete one task and then shift your focus to another. 

THE POMODORO TECHNIQUE.

In the Pomodoro Technique, you work with focus on a given task and take small breaks in between. This is very effective because it doesn't let you feel bored and overburdened. How to apply the technique? Like this:

- Work for 25 minutes.

- Take a 5 minutes break.

- Work again for 25 minutes.

- Increase the time of the break if you work more.

This technique teaches your brain to focus on a task for selected periods of time. The breaks act as a reward for the focused hard work. Also, after you complete the task, don't forget to take a long break and reward yourself. This will help you build a habit of working with discipline every day.

POWER OF FEEDBACK.

Giving yourself feedback is a wonderful way to improve your focus. We often avoid giving feedback to ourselves because we fear the outcome. But feedback does not mean judgment, it means measuring ourselves. 

When you measure your progress by giving yourself true feedback, you tend to do more work next time. By feedback, you know that you did 10 pushups yesterday, so your mind will tell you not to do less than 10 pushups today. This practice will increase your focus day by day.

Measure to see if you are spending time on the things that matter the most. Measure because it will help you focus on the things that matter and eliminate the things that don't matter to you.

PROPER SLEEP.

Sometimes, you just watch a Netflix series the whole night and do not give importance to your sleep. Then, you take a bad sleep, and when you wake up, you feel lethargic and lazy. When you try to do something, you can't concentrate on it. Then procrastination follows. You just mess up everything because of that.

We often ignore the importance of sleep in our life. It is like the fuel we need to feel energetic. But the problem is that people think that proper sleep means sleeping for longer periods. No, proper sleep means good quality, uninterrupted sleep. It's all about quality, not quantity. It's better to take 6 hours of good quality sleep than to take 8 hours of interrupted, bad quality sleep. 

Proper sleeping will:

- Make you live longer and keep your skin healthy.

- Increase your memory, focus, and mental cognition.

- Lower your anxiety, decrease your depression and improve your life.

- Speed recovery time, and prevent injuries.

- Make you more creative and a better problem solver.

So, these were the steps you can apply in your life if you want to increase your focus. Remember, improving your focus needs practice. Increasing your productivity does not mean increasing your quantity of work but increasing your quality of work. Work with focus on one task and then reward yourself.  

Thank you for reading the article. I hope you got some value from it. If the article was helpful to you, share it with your friends and with those in need. 

If you want to learn how to build self-confidence, click here and read my ultimate guide to building self-confidence.

If you are an overthinker and want to get rid of overthinking, click here.

If you want to learn to build new habits, click here.

Now you can get lost!