Stay on Target! One Handy Tip to Help You Focus on Your Chosen Task
September 24, 2015 in LIFE HACK
LIFE HACK – Stay on Target! One Handy Tip to Help You Focus on Your Chosen Task
It’s so difficult to stay on target sometimes. We’ve been conditioned to have such low attention spans.
That said, there are ways to not only keep focus, but improve your focus. I made a video talking about one great tip that helps you do just that. It’s my favorite of the many tips suggested in the book 100% Focused: 25 Great Ways To Improve Your Focus And Concentration by John Morgan.
Here’s the link to the post I spoke about in the video:
3 Tips For Practicing Even the Most Monotonous Stuff, and Like It
Here’s the Tip in a nut shell
Get a stopwatch, a timer and a notepad.
- Sit down to do your work or practice and give yourself a time limit, like 15, 30, or 45 minutes. That’s how long you will work. Set that on your timer and start it.
-
As soon as you do, start the stopwatch as well.
-
Get to work. The moment you lose focus by getting distracted, daydreaming, or stop working/practicing for any reason. Stop the stopwatch.
-
Get the notepad and write down from your stopwatch, how long you worked before you lost focus.
-
Reset your stopwatch, start it up again and return to work/practice.
-
If you lose focus again, stop the stopwatch and make a note of how long you worked this time. Did you do better? Worse?
Try to beat your time. Continue this until your timer goes off.
The point of this exercise is to train your focus. Ideally you should eventually be able to fill the entire time without losing focus. If you do, increase the time on the timer and try to fill that time too.
Pick up this book for more great tips.
Great post and great recommended reading, going to check that out. Something like to do to get/stay focus is put cell phone on do not disturb, because every time hear a chime or ding just instinctively check it which interrupts and breaks the concentration. Can set it up to ring or give an alert for specific just in case of emergencies and need to be reached. Another is have an old Mac that has two alerts and uses the speech talk feature that will ask me are you working and another alert set at a specific time that will say stand up and do some stretches and exercises.
Those are great tips too DISTRAKT! That cell phone thing is a big one.
Thanks a lot!