Focus: How to improve it and change your productive life forever
Focus is a superpower.
All of us want to focus more on work, communication with our partners and studies. Concentrating is complicated, but its benefits are undeniable, faster and more effective work. The problem is finding that period of concentration and making the most of it. Luckily this article contains the best ideas and research on how to focus and stay in that state.
We must all live focused on our present, on what we have in front of us, if your goals are personal or professional, this article should have everything you need.
Why I can’t focus?
You don’t have problem with focusing. The problem is deciding
I remember at the University when the teacher assign two-week projects. Two whole weeks to do it and for some reason I was doing it in two hours on the last day. After procrastinating for 13 days. Has it happened to you? Have you had a big task that you completed quickly at the last minute? That shows our ability to focus. But it took me 13 days to decide to focus.
Instead of deciding to focus on a specific task, we live in the false belief that multitasking is a better option.
There is nothing more unproductive.
The myth of multitasking
Yes, we can do two activities at the same time. Like listening to an audiobook while cooking breakfast.
But it is impossible to give them 100% of your concentration. You listen to each fragment of your audiobook and the eggs burn in the background or you focus on your eggs and listen to empty words from the author. Multitasking with your domestic tasks is not a big deal, the problem comes when you do it with your professional tasks.
Has it happened to you that you are doing your work and a notification interrupts you? Then you notice that when you come back to work you don’t quite remember where you left off. That’s the problem with multitasking.
A 2003 study published in the International Journal of Information Management found that the typical person checks email once every five minutes and that, on average, it takes 64 seconds to resume the previous task after checking their email. This is a dramatic metric that can make you 40% more unproductive.
Now a days, one of the requirements of large corporations is that their candidates do multitasking. Also people, who uses the word as a badge of honor for his work ethic, as if it’s better to be busy at everything than to be extraordinary at one task.
Warren Buffet’s 2-Step Strategy for Finding Your Priorities
1. Make a list: Write 25 professional priorities on a piece of paper. It was difficult for me to write 25, so I did the exercise with 10.
2. Shorten the list: Go through it and circle between 3–5 activities that you have written. These should be the most important in your professional life. They are the ones that will significantly affect your trajectory.
Buffet used this method to help his employees determine their priorities and focus on them. For example, with a pilot, Mike Flint, he did the exercise and confirmed that he would focus on his top 5 tasks and Buffet asked him “what about the ones you didn’t underline?”
Flint replied “Well, the top 5 are my main focus, but the other 20 come second. They’re still important, so I’ll work on them on and off as I see fit. They are not that urgent, but I still plan to give them dedicated effort.”
To which Buffet replied “No. You were wrong, Mike. Everything you didn’t circle became your avoid-at-all-costs list. No matter what, these things don’t get your attention until you’ve succeeded with your top 5.”
This method forces you to eliminate all tasks that might seem like a good use of your time. But they’re not a great use of your time.
How to train your focus
Get rid of distractions
These 2 small dead simple tricks tripled my productivity:
- Put the phone in another room
- Do not check my email until noon
Focusing is about eliminating distractions. The phone and your email can be the biggest. If I don’t check any of those at the beginning of my day, then I can use my morning to do my own agenda instead of reacting to other people’s agenda.
Your Daily Highlight
I learned this concept from this Ali Abdaal YouTube Video.
It refers to having a single task that is important to you. The power of the daily highlight is to treat it like any other commitment and force your behavior to revolve your day around that crucial task. Your day may not go as planned or you may not be able to complete all your tasks and feel 100% productive.
But this simple strategy ensures that you do the most important task for you every day. Just be sure to follow Stephen R. Covey advice “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing”
Control your energy, not your time
According to what phase of the day you are in, your brain will react in different ways.
I have noticed that my brain is on a creative frequency in the mornings. Fresh, productive and eloquent. It’s when writing becomes easy for me and making my business decisions becomes logical.
Of course, we don’t all operate the same way. The best productivity tip I can give you is to find 2–4 hours when your brain works best.
In those hours that nobody interrupts you and you can do your Daily Highlight.
Why do we work too much? — Cal Newport
Our society falls into the trap of unnecessary overwork and toxic productivity. We prefer to work more hours on multiple projects at the same time.
The thought that arises from companies and their employees is “Look, I’m busy with all this work. Surely everything I do is important.” We arrive at a status issue expecting to be praised for their work ethic “I must be important because I am always busy.”
You can not be 100% focused on any task if you do several and all are important.
If they are all important, then none is really important.
