As an employee, how do you stay focused at work when you literally have hundreds of other things to do, other than to sit at your work station compiling reports and working on your next project?
There are several reasons why it’s difficult for you to focus such as your annoying colleague, habits that cause us to waste time and many times, social media notifications. The truth, however, is that with the modern work climate, it is becoming more and more difficult for employees to stay focused.
If you’ve been having an increasingly hard time to stay focused on your project at work or your work goals, here are activities you can practice to keep you from distractions and boost your productivity.
Take More Breaks
As counteractive to productivity as this sounds, taking more breaks will help you keep your focus. Research has proven that short naps, regular vacations, and extended sleep periods do boost productivity and job satisfaction, which could lead to better job implementation.
However, the truth is, whether you need a bathroom break or a short break to get a bottle of your best energy shot, you’re not designed to focus for more than three hours.
Set Short Term Goals
Often, you may not know what to do at a given instance or day. You know you want to get to work early, sit at your desk, make more money or create a business to be reckoned with. The problem is, these are all plans for the future.
How about setting more realistic, short term goals that are easier to achieve and will get you to the longer-term goals? What do you choose or have to do this instance? How about in the next few hours?
When you have no idea what you should be working on to achieve the bigger term goals, then procrastination is sure to check-in, and you’ll begin to fill your mind with other plans that may seem very pleasant, but which will eventually set you off-course. This will eventually cause you to drop your productivity levels and loose long-term rewards.
Create a Morning Routine
Ever heard of a saying about waking up on the wrong side of the bed? Why make yourself go through that? Bad hair days, late starts to a schedule and bad days all happen because of lack of planning, or simply, lack of routines. You should always try to put yourself in a state of productivity and achievement by having a morning routine.
When you wake up in the morning, set some time and read some positive affirmations, a motivational book, do some exercise to get your energy pumping and set your short term daily goals. Once you do this, you’re setting yourself up for a highly productive day because you can harness your focus on achieving a successful day.
Tick off Your Priorities Early
If you have a to-do list, then you know that your priority tasks will be at the top of your list. As a result, your priority tasks will be the ones that require the most focus, as they are also quite challenging. You will, therefore, need to adequately utilize your mental capabilities at a time when you are running at an optimal level.
This is in most cases the early morning as you are refreshed and ready to take on the day’s challenges.
Silence Your Smart Phone
Let’s face it, smartphones are our first efficiency destroyer. Once you get distracted by the notifications of text messages and calls coming in, it may be hard to get back on track as you will easily lose the battle to check on what else is happening on social media, or whether a friend accepted your invitation to dinner. It is quite hard to get back to tasks at hand and focus fully once you give in to distractions.
According to CNN, French children are to leave their mobile devices at home because of the distractions they cause to both the student population and teachers. This ban applies to students between ages three to five years due to screen addiction reaching worrying levels detrimental to education.
