Do you lose concentration at work? Or you forget things easily and you are being queried? If YES, here are 20 ideas and tips on how to focus better at work. It is not always easy to stay focused at work. We all get distracted sometimes and at other times, we just don’t feel motivated enough to keep working throughout the day. But since there is always so much to do with limited time available to complete the tasks, you have no choice but to force yourself to continue working in spite of distractions.
There are a lot of ways to force yourself to keep working on days when you are feeling uninspired or distracted. Even if you have the worst case of attention deficit disorder, these 20 tips should be able to help you focus:
20 ideas and Tips on How to Focus Better at Work
1. Go To Bed Early
Staying awake late into the night might cause sleep deprivation and when you wake up the next day, you might feel tired and you won’t feel rejuvenated as you ought to and this of course affects your ability to focus at work. It is important to get at least 7-9 hours of sleep every night and this means that you have to go to bed very early.
2. Never Skip Breakfast
Whether you are on a diet or trying to watch your weight, you should never skip breakfast. Your brain needs a lot of nutrients to be able to function at optimum capacity and when you skip breakfast, you deprive your brain of these nutrients. If you want your brain to function perfectly throughout the day so that you can focus and be productive at work, you should always endavour to eat a healthy breakfast.
3. Exercise Daily
Exercise helps to promote the flow of blood and oxygen to your brain cells so that you can concentrate and function better at work. It also helps to reduce your stress levels.
4. Create a to-do List
Sometimes when there is clutter in your mind, you would be more open to distractions. A to-do list helps you to organize your schedule and mind so that you can have a clear idea of what you need to be doing at each point in time.
5. Avoid Multi-tasking
Multi-tasking doesn’t help you achieve more results as most people erroneously think. Multitasking creates room for distraction and mind clutter. Stop multitasking and learn how to focus on one task at a time, complete it, and then move on to the next task.
6. Fix a Time for Social Media
Social media is a huge source of distraction at work but in today’s world, telling someone not to visit social media during work is like telling them not to breathe because most people can’t do without social media especially when they also use it for work or business.
However, you can schedule a specific time for social media in your to-do list. You can limit social media time to an hour to coincide with your break times then after that, log out of your social media accounts and leave all social media activities till after work.
7. Schedule Email Checking
Emails are just as distracting as social media. Set your emails to refresh once in a few hours and avoid checking and responding to emails every time. Try to assign a time for checking and responding to your emails in your to-do list so as to avoid constant distractions.
8. Break Large Tasks into Smaller Chunks
Large tasks can sometimes seem overwhelming and such tasks can promote distractions. In order to avoid this, you can try to break down all tasks into bite-sized tasks so that it doesn’t look like you have to do much and since the tasks look simple, you can easily concentrate.
9. Set Deadlines
If you always feel like you have all the time in the world to handle tasks, then it is only normal that you would be open to any form of distraction, but if you set deadlines and feel like the clock is ticking, you would be forced to concentrate.
10. Turn off Your Phone
Phone calls, text messages and IMs can also create serious distractions. You can either turn off your phones when you are really busy and let the voicemails and text messages drop so that you can attend to them at the times you have scheduled for attending to phone calls in your to-do list.
11. Take Short Breaks
When you sit for long periods of time, the blood and oxygen flow to your brain is not completely cut off but it is significantly reduced and this causes you to feel weak and tired. To avoid this, you should avoid sitting for long hours. Try to take short walks and do some sitting exercises so that you can get constant blood and oxygen flow to your brain.
12. Eliminate Background Noise
Discussions, chatter, and noise around you can also create distractions. You can try to get a music player with earphones to plug in your ears so that you can listen to some soft and inspirational music that would help you cut out background noise, and help you concentrate.
13. Do Away with Clutter
Physical clutter can lead to mind clutter and if your workspace is not properly organized, you might spend more time than you should trying to figure out where some important things that you need urgently are. Try to organize your workspace at the end of every work day so that you can start the next day with a clean and well organized workspace.
14. Get Out of The House
If you work from home, you might never be able to completely avoid distractions. You can consider going outside your home to a coffee shop, library, co-working space, or somewhere else where you can work without distractions.
15. Move On When You Get Stuck
There are times you would get stuck with a specific task, in such cases, just look for an uncomplicated task on your to-do list and divert your attention to that, and when you receive some inspiration or motivation to complete the complicated task, then you can now go back to it.
16. Play Games
Games are sometimes necessary to help relieve stress and help you refocus. You could also leave out some minutes for games that you can play on your computer or mobile phones in your to-do list.
17. Work with a Team
Sometimes, other people with strong work ethics can be a good influence on you. You can try to pair up with other people at work who can be a great source of inspiration to you, and can help improve your focus.
18. Keep Snacks and Water Nearby
Those trips to the water dispenser or to get snacks can promote distractions too. It helps to come to work with all the supplies you need with you including water and snacks so that you can reduce the time you spend on activities unrelated to work.
19. Use a Good Chair and Table
You need a good table and chair with great back support to work with. If your work requires that you sit a lot and you continue to use a bad chair and table, you might have a lot of back, eye and neck troubles which of course can be very uncomfortable and distracting.
20. Motivate Yourself
Everyone likes rewards; you can motivate yourself to stay focused and complete tasks by giving yourself little treats after successfully completing tasks before their deadlines elapse. Find inexpensive ways to keep yourself motivated and focused at all times.
In conclusion
You can also download some online tools such as apps and software on your computer or mobile phone to help you focus and eliminate distractions. Some helpful mobile apps you can download include Forest, Freedom, Nosili, Hocus Focus, and Balanced.