2 Tips For Staying Focused At Work

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From Silicon to Stories: Matt’s Moments

5 min readJun 26, 2022

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How do you stay focused at work? Do you have distraction problems at work? In today’s distraction-filled world, there are unlimited sources of distractions in the workplace to affect your concentration.

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Like many people, I occasionally couldn’t stay focused at work. Sometimes, I was distracted by my smartphone and colleagues around me. Also, I would spend so much time focused on a simple task. In short, there are so many reasons that cause me to lose my concentration at work.

Concentration is like a muscle that strengthens as you exercise it. In terms of this topic, I knew that many articles teach you how to concentrate at work. For instance, limit online interruptions, block social media sites, schedule daily focus hours, isolate yourself entirely from distractions and focus only on a single task, take short breaks, etc. Those tips could boost your productivity and focus.

In this article, I’d like to share 2 tips to dramatically boost your focus at work, and I have implemented them into my daily life.

Tip 1. Self-Discipline

Self-discipline is essential, not only to achieve success in your career but also in your whole life. There are, in fact, two sources of self-discipline in the workplace. I have summarized two practical methods here that can significantly improve your results.

Method 1. Prioritize Daily Working Plan

Without a doubt, there are always many assignments at hand. The first step before making a To-Do-List is to prioritize your daily working plan. Understandably, you may have heard this advice many times, but verifying the importance of tasks will help you prioritize your time most effectively. After structuring the daily working plan, you have to follow the procedure and ensure that you can get into the flow of your work.

Method 2. Set The Deadline And Time Limit for Tasks

Before getting started on your To-Do-List, remember to set time limits for every task. Place a limit on how long it should take you to complete a task. When doing so, you can feel a sense of urgency that will push your focus and motivation.

When you have a difficult task, scheduling a meeting with your boss and team members to gather advice at the beginning will help you complete the task sooner rather than later. It’s risky not to have enough time to provide a complete picture of the result before the meeting, but it can push you to sit down and focus within a shorter timeline.

Tips 2. Focus On What You Can Control

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So far, there has been little discussion about the breakdown of the goals on the topic of staying focused at work. I personally believe that many of the skills in project management can be implemented in your daily life. The Breakdown Method can give your professional and personal life clarity.

Many daily tasks are overly complicated, or we may lack the motivation to start the task. The most efficient way to simplify the difficult targets is to break the task down into small parts. It will make it easier to control your behavior to complete these small parts from beginning to completion.

In my experience, a leading cause of procrastination and disappointment in not achieving optimal success is overly complicated tasks and targets. For this reason, breaking the task into smaller parts will bring your target into focus. It will allow you to concentrate on what is in your control, pushing more immediate results to experience faster successes.

There is an interesting video at TEDxCrestmoorParkED by Reggie Rivers, and the topic is “If you want to achieve your goals, don’t focus on them.”

If you’re focused on your goal, you’ll never achieve it. You have to focus on your behaviors. Behaviors are things that are in your control solely. ~ By Reggie Rivers

This seems to confirm that most people haven’t focused on the small parts but rather on the large targets, so they always have distraction problems at work.

You control what you control. When you focus on the part that is in your control, which is your behaviors, you tend to achieve your goals ~ By Reggie Rivers

So, breaking the task into smaller parts helps focus on what you can control and what is needed to complete it, making it more manageable. Eventually, you will reach your goal of hitting that difficult target.

Key Takeaway

From these arguments, one can conclude that “self-discipline” and “focus on what you can control” are two constructive ways to concentrate your focus at work. Small steps every day will lead you to accomplish your goals. In summary, you have to take the first step.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article.

Have a topic or an idea you would like me to write about? If you have any questions, recommendations, or experienced a measure of success with these methods, please leave me a message here.

Have a nice day. :)

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