Do you constantly get distracted and look for ways to increase your focus? In the past few decades, people have been suffering from dwindling attention spans. All thanks in part to our digital connectedness and modern advertising schemes. Almost everything we interact with on a day-to-day basis is designed to catch our attention. And because we’re constantly bombarded with these stimuli, our brains eventually lose the ability to focus on something for prolonged periods.
But the truth is that our survival as a species is largely dependent on our ability to focus on certain things. So, just how do you take back control of your concentration and lead a more productive and meaningful life?
How can you increase your focus?
Good question.
Below, we’re sharing with you four simple hacks you can do today to increase your attention span and get more things done.
CHUNK DOWN
Chunking is the art of identifying your end-goals and breaking it down to smaller, bite-sized tasks that are easier to tackle. It’s a nifty hack for anyone who wants to make incremental progress in achieving their plans and helps to increase your focus.
And here’s how to do it:
- Capture your ideas – write down everything that you want or need to accomplish in your life.
- Organize by commonalities – You can usually group these pressing things by health, emotions, work/career, finances, personal relationships, and spirituality.
- Identify the ultimate outcome for each group – as soon as you identify the desired outcome for each cluster, you then have a clearer picture of the steps you need to take to achieve each goal.
- Have an action plan and stick to it – Come up with the steps necessary to achieve these goals. Make sure they’re bite-sized so you can track your progress down to the smallest tasks, then do it.
SWITCH OFF
It’s hard to say whether social media has done us more harm than good. We’re constantly feeling the pressure to stay connected. Whether it’s by checking our emails often or responding to IMs from our friends.
If you want to attain more focus in your life, sometimes you just need to disconnect. That means switching off your phone, laptop (if you’re not working on your laptop), and TV so you can dedicate ALL your attention to the task at hand. In fact, try jotting down ideas in a pen and paper. It helps you retain more information and keep you focused on what you’re doing.
MEDITATE
You’ve probably heard this countless times before, but meditation really works. Imagine a muscle. Meditation helps you strengthen your ability to increase your focus just like a muscle and improves your concentration significantly. And the good news is that you only need as little as 5 minutes a day of meditation to reap the benefits.
TAKE BREAKS
Don’t underestimate the power of rest. Sure, you may think that you can achieve maximum efficiency working on one task straight through without pause. But research suggests that people actually perform better doing something when they take short breaks in between. This gives your brain time to re-energize and focus better on what you’re doing.
BE PATIENT
It takes a little while to form a habit to increase your focus. The good and bad thing about focus is that it’s something you can lose and gain, depending on how you live your life. If you find yourself not having as much concentration as you’d like, the four steps we’ve just shared with you will put you on the right track to building up laser-like focus. Remember, just like with every other skill, you get better at it the more you practice it.
COMMIT
Find ways to hold yourself accountable – you can even leave a comment below to set your intention to the Universe.
All the best on your journey.
Have a question for us to answer on our blog? Contact us or leave a comment below.
[contact-form to=”hello@msmaven.co” subject=”Enquiry from Ms Maven blog”][contact-field label=”Name” type=”name”][contact-field label=”Email” type=”email” required=”1″][contact-field label=”Message” type=”textarea” required=”1″][/contact-form]