It does not matter how many successful people you rub shoulders with or how many powerful conferences you attend. What matters is how much you learn from such opportunities. It is okay to be busy all day if you can afford to do that but when you look back at the end of the day, can you say you did everything according to plan or reached your goals for the day? The point is, you can be in a room full of opportunities and still miss them and be busy all day long doing something that was not in your plans. The main reason for this is that some of us have not mastered the skill of focus yet.
Why do we need the ability to concentrate on something or pay particular attention to it? There has been so much emphasis on how goals and a sense of purpose drive us to do something about our lives and develop psychologically, mentally, socially, and financially. It goes without saying that we need to direct mental effort toward these things if they are to become a reality. Our plans, thoughts, and actions should move us in the direction of our desired destination.
There is no question, completing some tasks is not easy. It is even more difficult when our minds keep wandering away and there are more other distractions like YouTube videos, social media trends and chats, video games, and Netflix et cetera. It does not take a genius to know that even if at the end of the day we do manage to complete our tasks, each moment spent on whatever is distracting us is making us less productive than we would be if we stayed focused. It keeps us from using our full potential toward reaching our goals. We should be able to finish tasks within the minimal time possible and fit into our schedule something meaningful if there is still more time left unless we feel we really need to refresh our minds. To be able to be that productive, we need to learn to keep our eyes, hearts, and minds on our goals.
Also, we need to learn to stay alert to be able to identify new opportunities and great ideas. Thus, it is important for us to always be aware of our environment while we learn to listen attentively especially where we are more likely to get valuable information that can contribute to our journey.
We can do the following to learn to stay focused;
1. Understand where your focus should be – every day when you wake up remind yourself of your purpose and dreams. Why are your dreams and the path you have chosen so important to you? What needs to be done to reach your goals at the set time? What do you lose or gain from the distractions that you are facing? Knowing or understanding the significance of your goals and dreams can help you stay focused on the tasks that help you realize those dreams or goals.
2. Keep away from social media – if you are a heavy user of social media, investing all of your focus on tasks may prove difficult. You may constantly get the urge to check what could be trending or what friends are saying. Log out from your social media sights if you have such a problem and log in only when having a break or when you have completed a task.
3. Make a conscious decision to improve your focus skills – you need to understand that you have a weakness and make your daily job to fight it. You will need to decide to fight your distracting addictions and invest more time and energy in what matters most. Train your mind to say no to things that you shouldn't be doing. Fighting addictions is not easy. Therefore, you might need to gradually limit usage before you try to cut out completely.
4. Limit your focus – avoid having too many things to focus on at the same time. Give yourself to focus on one task and finish it before you move on to the next to avoid failure to finish any of your tasks. Besides the possibility of having a messy day resulting from failure to limit focus, measuring progress may also be difficult.
5. Take a break – the brain too does get tired and that affects our thinking. Mental fatigue can result from having too much to do without taking breaks in between. As much as some people would consider working for hours without taking a break something to be admired, it does affect the quality of our work or makes us less productive. When we have mental fatigue, our brain does not function at its full capacity. It is recommended to take a short break and allow the brain to recover in order to stay focused.
6. Prioritize your mental health – try not to entertain thoughts, activities, and environments that bring us down. It is difficult to concentrate and stay focused when there is so much negativity going on in our heads.
7. Find or make a suitable environment to do your work – focusing is nearly impossible when there is too much background noise or we do not feel comfortable. Consider things like temperature as well.
Peace, Love & Prosperity!
Mario Sousa
Heart-Centered Leadership
My team and I are on a mission to lead other like-minded, heart-centered business leaders that are ready to make a bigger impact in their personal lives, their communities and around the world. Please review the information below and reach out to me personally with any questions you might have. The future looks extremely bright, if you see what I see, let's work together.