“We must never become too busy sawing to take time to sharpen the saw”, management author Stephen Covey says, and rightly so. By paying attention to your well-being and taking care of your body and your mind, disruptive stimuli disappear and your productivity and concentration increase. Discover the 8 golden tips for better focus here!
1. Routine
With a good routine you enhance your focus and productivity. It gives your mind more peace and quiet. The regularity ensures less stress, a better sleep and thus improved concentration and better results.
Tip: Don’t forget to leave some space for creativity and flexibility.
2. Realistic expectations
Create a work planning with clear and feasible goals. Focus starts with the right mindset and realistic expectations that bring you peace of mind and allow you to work in a focused way.
3. Hunt the elephants first, don’t get distracted by the bunnies
Deal with the most difficult, annoying, demanding or biggest to dos first thing in the morning. Your energy level is at its peak then. And don’t get distracted by the bunnies or the small tasks. If you do it this way, the big task is immediately out of the way and you won’t have to worry about it anymore.
4. Stop multitasking
Multitasking forces your brain to adapt constantly from one task to another. And then your brain needs to focus on every new message coming in. By multitasking you lose not only time but the quality of your tasks is lower too.
5. Break time = recuperation time
In order to focus you need to learn how to unfocus. Our brain cannot run three mental marathons in a row. Plan regular short breaks: take a walk, get up from your desk to have lunch, have a chat with a coworker, stretch your limbs, …
6. Trust
When you’re working remotely, you don’t need to constantly show everyone you’re online. Let go of that self-mandated control and use the time to focus.
7. Put focus time down in your schedule
Focus is a basic requirement for meaningful knowledge work and thus ensures productivity. Purposefully plan time slots with focus time in your schedule, just like you plan your meetings. Definitely do this the first Friday of the month because then it’s… Focus Friday!
8. Embrace mistakes
Nobody’s perfect and neither are you. Successful people talk about their mistakes. It creates psychological safety and offers coworkers the option to learn from it.
