Improve your concentration and find focus

Why is finding focus so important

Finding focus in what you do helps you absorb and retain information and improves creativity. Maintaining focus in a meeting or one-on-one helps you fully engage which is essential for collaboration and can deepen your relationships. Without focus, we are only half there. When we are distracted by our thoughts all the time, it’s really hard to be present for our lives. We spend more time catching our brain up to the latest comment or reminding and rehashing where we've already been.

Finding focus will require addressing your surroundings, your mental state, and your physical health. It will also require rethinking the way you manage time. Creating a bit of routine in your day and week will provide the structure and guardrails to then improve your overall creativity, productivity, and well being.

Improving concentration and focus through your physical environment and mental state

Eliminate Distractions in your environment

Your surroundings: Say you want to write a book. Close your eyes and think about the ideal environment for you to be sitting down and tackling that challenge. There were one of two scenarios that likely came to mind. One is in a coffee shop, where you can be an active observer and gain ideas. The other was likely some flavor of a cabin in the woods on a rainy day. The first scene is one good for coming up with inspiration and ideas, but won't get you pumping out multiple pages. The second scene is when you have your ideas and need to sit down and put them all together. The second scene is a representation of the elimination of all distractions in modern life. We instinctively know that disorder in our environment impacts our ability to pay attention. The TV blaring in the background, people coming in and out, and being quick access for everyone in our lives is not the ideal environment to get into a zone you can sit down and create. Well, we can't all go to a cabin in the woods. So think about where you set up to work today. If you're doing a side project in your home, what space have you created to do that. If it's at the kitchen table, that might be hard to do anything creative or efficiently if you have family members constantly coming in and out. If the kitchen table is the only place you have, think about how you can make it distraction free. Maybe noise-canceling earphones to remove the sound of the kid's TV in the background. Or a sign to signal to others you are in work mode and shouldn't be disturbed. The point is to create walls, either virtual or physical, that provides a space for you to concentrate.

On your computer: Let’s assume you now have a spot to do your work uninterrupted. Now you're looking at the dreaded blank screen. For the master procrastinators among us, you will not blow this opportunity to avoid it. There are ways to address the blank screen (see timeboxing below) but first let's make sure you are eliminating the distractions within your screen. When you need heads down time, think about ways you can be disturbed and try to proactively remove them.

Protect your time from others: When I'm in create mode and have blocked off a chunk of time for that thinking time, I will set all my settings to Do Not Disturb. This means no instant messages, the phone is on silent, and no email comes through. The worst thing to break your groove once you get started, is an IM from someone on your team asking for something they need. Thinking that it will only take 2 minutes to respond and wanting to get that action done quickly, you'll stop what you’re doing and help them out. In reality, those couple minutes could be robbing you of 15-20 minutes. The cost of switching tasks, addressing the new tasking, and then switching back is high, especially if you are in a high thinking and creative moment. Going from deep concentration needed work to tactical items and then back can burn most of your time.
Protect your time from you: In addition from others coming along, we also often let ourselves get distracted. One of the big areas we do this is in the internet. You can easily go down rabbit holes trying to find something that helps you out and spend all your time searching instead of creating. The internet can be helpful but it can also be a time suck. This is where the use of time boxing can help (see below for more on time boxing). Say you need to create a powerpoint presentation, give yourself 5 minutes to find what is relevant out there. From there, stop the searching and then start to create. Even if there is something better, if you can't find it in 5 minutes it’s not worth it. You can likely create in 10 minutes what it would take you 15 minutes to find, not to mention the lost time switching from searching to creating and then back again. So search of a few minutes then spend the rest of the time in create mode.

Setting intentions and gaining mental clarity: prioritize and create mini-goals weekly and daily

There are a lot of things we can be doing. You may have several business ideas you want to go after. Or a couple book ideas. Top that off with all the things you need to get done around the house, time and support for your family, maintaining connections with friends, and if you are still working a day job you probably have a bunch of things you need to accomplish there. That's too much to have to tackle at once or even in any given day. To make sure you are working on the things that are going to move you towards your goals, it's important to revisit those goals often. Try starting your week with looking at your big picture goals and then setting some intentions for the week. We have a hard time making progress when we think about the end goal. It becomes overwhelming with so much to do to get there. Setting a mini goal for what you can accomplish that week keeps you focused while still moving toward that bigger goal.

In addition to setting your weekly goals, every morning it helps to sit down and set your intention for the day. Use calendar blocking to set a time to plan out the day. Think about what's on tap for the day and items you have been asked to do. Look at your calendar and decided what needs to be done and what can be moved aside. We often take up our time by focusing on what's urgent, but then leave no time to focus on what's important.

Correlation of concentration to physical health

We would be remiss to not address some of the biggest reasons you may have trouble concentrating and focusing your attention and that is your physical health. Your sleep, your energy, your physical activity, your nutrition, and how you deal with stress all factor into your mental health. The ability to concentrate and think clearly is dependent on your overall health.

Sleep: Poor sleep can have a big impact on your mental acuity. Lack of sleep reduces your ability to focus attention and your ability to perform tasks especially relating to reasoning or logic. Chronic poor sleep can have an even bigger impact with deeper impacts to concentration and memory. Prioritize getting plenty of quality sleep. If you are having difficulty sleeping, work on maintaining regular bedtime routines and good sleep hygiene.
Insufficient physical activity: Lack of physical activity can lead to tense muscles. Tightness in your neck and shoulder can lead to discomfort and affect your concentration. In addition studies have shown regular exercise improves your oxygen levels and results in critical blood vessel growth resulting in neuroplasticity and improved capacity to learn.
Poor eating habits: What we eat contributes to how we feel, including our mental sharpness and clarity. If we don’t fuel our brains with the proper nutrients, we start to experience symptoms like memory loss, fatigue, and lack of concentration. Whole food, low-fat diets such as Mediterranean, Nordic, and DASH diets are linked to a lower risk of cognitive decline and dementia. (Source: “Nutrition and cognitive health: A life course approach”, March 2023, Frontiers in Public Health.)
Dealing with stress: So you’ve had a stressful day. What is your way of dealing with it? The easy way to unwind can often be turning on the TV so we can tune out the noise of the day. Or reaching for a glass of wine to provide the instant decompression. There are healthier ways to deal with stress that helps your brain work through all the load instead of trying to drown it out. Doing a transition (see below) is essential. On top of that here are a few other tips that work.
Meditation: whether that be an active form such as yoga or a quiet walk or sitting down with breathing exercises, meditation where you try to remove mental thought provides the needed rest for your brain to move on for the day. Basically the act of not thinking is the best way for the brain to recharge.

Exercise: beyond yoga or walking, any exercise is beneficial. Not only does it improve your energy level over time, it also provides your brain something to focus on that is more immediate than all the stresses you have on your mind.

Pain and discomfort: Ok this one sounds weird, but bare with me. The body responds to pain with a release of endorphins. This creates a sense of calm and well being. In Buddhism and yoga, there is a concept of monkey mind. This is your inner critic, the thoughts that run amok that you can’t turn off. It stifles your creativity and gives you that feeling you can’t control your thoughts. If you are a person that feels like you will always be distracted and your ability to concentrate is limited, then it’s your monkey mind you need to address. Different exercises in meditation are focused on how to turn it off. They work, but it takes a lot of practice. So my shortcut is creating a physical environment so uncomfortable it has to turn off. Two healthy ways to do this: sauna therapy and acupressure mats. After 20 minutes in a sauna, it gets so uncomfortable, my monkey brain has to turn off and all I can concentrate on is breathing. When I’m done after 30-45 minutes my body feels like it’s been through a deep massage and my mind is quieter and feels renewed. Acupressure mats are becoming quite the sensation. In addiotn to all the other benefits, I use this primarily as a meditation tool after work before I start my writing. If you haven’t heard of acupressure mats, they use the same concept of the ancient practice of laying on a bed of nails to invite pressure in to release and let go. The first couple minutes are so uncomfortable that it requires your brain to focus on nothing but your breathing and baring through it.

Managing time and tasks

Eliminate the illusion you can multitask

Being able to focus on one task at a time is actually much more efficient than an attempt at multi-tasking. Instead of trying to do two tasks in a half hour, do one for fifteen minutes, then the next. You might be asking: how is it more efficient, it's still a half hour spent? If you truly focus on just one at a time, I guarantee one of two things will happen. For straightforward, tactical items, you will find you could do the task in 5-10 minutes when you focus on it and eliminate distractions. For tasks that require more thought and creativity, you were able to come up with a better outcome. Not only that, but because you weren't loading your brain with multiple things to try to accomplish at the same time and doing multiple context switches, you find you are not as mentally exhausted.

Time boxing

This is great technique for gaining focus. They say the key to writer's block, is to just start writing. This may sound simplistic, but the idea is to just start. As an avid procrastinator, I realize this is no easy feat. So I've come to start relying on the practice of time boxing. The idea is to firewall your time with a preset time frame. There are a couple strategies to practice this.

One would be something similar to the Pomodoro Technique. Where as you give a specific task a set amount of time, followed by a break, then you move on to the next. Pomodoro sets the time to 25 minutes of doing, 5 minutes of break.

Another approach is setting a short amount of time to take on a task. Give yourself 5 or 10 minutes. When that 5 minutes are up, you give yourself permission to move on to the next task. However, if you've found focus, you can continue on. This method is great for tasks you don't enjoy or are uncertain of how to start so you have procrastinated it. You can do almost anything, even the most unpleasant of tasks for 5 or 10 minutes. One of my least favorite tasks is cleaning. I will procrastinate it until I'm left with a stack of dishes, pile of laundry, and dusty shelves on a Sunday morning to have to tackle. Instead of spending a couple hours on a nice Sunday morning, I have found time boxing 5 minutes every evening to tackle one thing it is so much less overwhelming and hardly feels like the chore that cleaning is.

Along with helping to eliminate procrastination, time boxing is also helpful for allowing yourself some distractions but not letting the distraction completely derail you. Say you do want to scroll some Instagram feeds or find some inspiration on Pinterest, but you know you have a habit of turning a quick glance to hours of scrolling. Use time boxing, set a clock timer for 10 or 20 minutes. Allow yourself this time to wonder down the social media ecosphere until your heart’s content. However, once the alarm goes off, you’re done. Onto the task you were taking a break from.

Time blocking

Time blocking is a little different than time boxing but related. Time blocking is giving a task space on your calendar. Instead of a To Do list that just piles up, move the items on your to do to your calendar. Even if it's as simple as calling the dentist. Block off 15 minutes to do it. Then set the thought aside. This technique helps eliminate the brain space all the items you need to do is taking up. Once you know that it's calendar and you will tackle it when the time comes, you no longer have to worry or think about it.

Taking time blocking to the next level, think about what your energy levels are throughout the day. Align the type of task to the time a day you are better at it. If you are more creative in the morning when your mind is fresh, put your strategic thinking time in the morning. If you get mentally fatigued at the end of the day but find you enjoy socializing, put more of your team meetings and one-on-ones at the end of your work day.

Another helpful boast to time blocking is time theming or categorization. Most roles have multiple different aspects to them. Some areas are our strengths where we’ll spend more time. Other areas we may be challenged with and therefore don’t spend as much time doing. To make sure you are spending enough time in all the areas that will make you successful in your job, develop categories for these areas and color code them on your calendar. For instance your job may require these types of tasks: client management, internal networking, strategic thinking, analytical processing, tactical operations. Creating these themes and assigning them to spots in your calendar, you can then see if you are spending enough time in each area. Is internal operations taking away time from client engagement? Are you spending enough time thinking strategically? Having themes will also help with lining up similar tasks together so you can batch or group them to those times of day you are better suited for them.

Creating transitions

If you're trying to accomplish a few goals, then you need to think about how you transition yourself from one task to another. Context switching can be a real load on us. It is hard for a brain to stop one train of thought to pick up another about a completely different topic. There are a few things you can do to make the transition easier and to allow yourself to find focus for the next task. The first two help for quick switches you need to do throughout the day. The last two help when you switching from one role to another such as switching from your day job to your side hustle or switching from work life to home life.

Empty the cup: After you have completed a meeting, take a couple moments to write down your action items for the meeting and any learnings you need to take with you. Empty out all your takeaways from that meeting before entering the next one. This is called Emptying the Cup. You are pouring at all the thoughts in your brain you just filled it with before going on to the next. This creates an open vessel or cup for you to then fill again. A lot of times the distraction in a meeting or conversation you are having are the thoughts swarming around in your own brain.
Breath work: We often don't give ourselves breaks in our work day. We going from meeting to meeting. What we miss is giving our bodies and brains oxygen and a moment to relax. If you are like many of us and work in a hybrid environment, then many of your meetings a video calls where we don't even stand between meetings. Even if you don't have time to leave the desk area, still take a couple seconds for a quick exercises. Try a grounding exercise. At the end of each meeting, stand up. Use the pushing of the End Call button as an anchor to trigger you to rise from your chair. Close your eyes and feel your feet standing firmly on the ground. Consciously feel your breath. Take 4 deep breaths in and out. These 4 breathes when practiced several times through out the day will actually provide you brain and body with more oxygen. Closing your eyes and focusing on you instead of work, provides the mental transition to switch to the next task.
Take a walk: Getting out of the environment you are currently in can be a huge help in letting your brain sort out everything you have be throwing at it. A short walk around the block, not thinking of the work you have been doing is a great way to provide the mind a little rest and to help transition to something else.
Meditation: Sometimes we need to just take a break to decompress and rest before we can move on to the next. Say you have just completed your 8-10 hour day. but you know you still need to fix dinner, help with homework, and put in an hour on the book you’re writing. Take a 10 minute rest break. Using meditation exercises, this quick break can help clear your head and provide the respite your brain needs to start again.

Finding focus and gaining concentration is a skill we must practice. In today’s world with short headlines or the bite size entertainment from social media, it’s harder than ever before. Having regular routines and processes will help us gain the focus we need to move forward while taking back control of our time.