If your workday feels filled with deadlines that you’re struggling to meet, a brain that won’t let you concentrate or a feeling of stagnation that’s preventing your ability to complete simple tasks, it may be a sign that you need to improve how you focus.
Productivity and efficiency can be hindered by how well you are able to focus and complete tasks while at work. This can impact your work ethic and performance, and in general, may affect how others perceive you at work. It may also result in being detrimental to your business if you’re failing to meet key deadlines or performance indicators.
Learning how to arrange time is a key way to begin addressing focus issues. It’s important to know what to prioritise task-wise, as it will allow you to do things that are more time-critical or important as opposed to spending time on less important tasks. This promotes efficiency and productivity and allows you to channel your focus where it needs to go.
It’s also important to eliminate distractions in the workplace, both internally and externally. If ýou’re finding yourself getting up to make your fourth cup of coffee in fifteen minutes, it’s safe to assume you’re actually distracting yourself.
Refraining from indulging in procrastinating activities, ensuring that you’re not distracted by colleagues and avoiding the lure of the cat videos of youtube may seem like obvious indicators of how to avoid distraction. Checking your phone, spending more time than necessary on droll tasks or taking unneeded breaks to ‘refresh’ can be just as distracting as what was listed previously.
Remove all unnecessary focus breakers from your working situation simply and effectively, or, in the case that you cannot, talk to your colleagues about improving your work productivity and asking them not to distract during crucial crunch times of productivity for you.
It’s also important to remember that, while multitasking may seem a great way to tackle many jobs, multitasking can be a hindrance to actual productivity. Sticking to working on single tasks through to completion will allow for more focus to be channelled into one task at a time, without the added productivity loss of multiple incomplete tasks.
Dealing with procrastination effectively reduces lost time and productivity while working – ensure that you make a plan with how to address your time management and stick to it. Purchasing a day planner or scheduling your day with an app can be an easy method to address this, but you must stick with it for it to take full effect.