Managing your time at work is an essential skill in order to work efficiently and productively, regardless of how many hours you are working. To succeed at this, it’s vital to possess good focus and concentration.
But what is focus at work, exactly, and why is it so important? Our guide explores exactly this, while also offering some great, practical tips on how to enhance your focus skills at work.
What Is Focus, and Why Is It So Important?
When we talk about “focus”, we refer to the act of concentrating all our thoughts, activities, and effort on one specific thing. Think about it like this: on a typical day, you likely have a huge range of tasks to handle, both in your professional and your private life.
When you focus, you actively choose to pay full and exclusive attention to just one of those many tasks, effectively disregarding the others. Bear in mind, though, that for focus to work, it has to be temporary.
At some point, in fact, you will need to shift your focus from one activity to the next, depending on your priorities. Focus at work is, of course, essential if you want to keep your productivity and motivation high. When you focus, all your senses heighten, and several areas in your brain are activated, including the frontoparietal attention network.
What Causes Lack of Focus at Work?
If you think you lose focus too often while working, then be reassured: this is very common, and it is also very easy to fix. One of the main culprits of lack of focus at work is the urge to multitask.
While multitasking has long been praised as an excellent trait to possess, especially as a busy, in-demand leader, it comes with some downsides – one of the main ones being, precisely, the risk of losing focus.
Doing several things at once is not always necessary, even when you are pressed for time. This is because it might cause your concentration levels to plummet, which in turn can contribute to making mistakes and causing issues or delays.
How Can I Improve My Focus at Work?
As we mentioned, improving your focus at work is relatively simple – but it all begins with making the conscious decision to tune out everything else and give your full attention to only the task at hand.
Below you will find a list of tips that you can implement right away to see your focus levels soar.
Optimize Your Morning
For most people, the morning is the time of the day when they feel more productive and less prone to distractions. Meaning, this is the perfect moment to focus. Do you remember that daily focus task that we mentioned earlier?
This can – in fact, should – be done in the morning, preferably first thing. If you have a list of creative, admin, and analytical tasks, push the admin and analysis to the afternoon and focus on the creative ones during the first hours of the day.
This way, you will avoid that all-too-common post-lunch slump, which is often detrimental to creative and strategic thinking, while enabling you to get a head start on the most important tasks of the day. Fuel your brain with focus-boosting foods such as blueberries, green tea, nuts, and – of course – a good, old cup of coffee.
Pick a Daily Focus Task
Every day at work you are dealing with several different tasks and activities, each one with its own degree of importance and urgency. Here, we are not suggesting that you should only complete one task per day, as that is simply not feasible.
Instead, we invite you to select only one thing to focus on each day. This means that, for a set amount of time, your entire attention will be concentrated upon that specific thing, leaving everything else out. Think about this as your one priority for the day, your non-negotiable task around which you are going to organize the rest of your working day.
Set Time Limits for Admin Tasks
Admin tasks can often be dull and time-consuming, killing motivation, productivity, and – you guessed it – focus. This is why it’s important to set yourself a specific time limit for each of your admin tasks.
For example, if you need to catch up on emails, don’t keep checking your inbox every ten minutes. Instead, block an hour out of your calendar to go through all your messages and respond to the urgent ones.
Similarly, if you are falling behind on your invoices, don’t keep postponing them until it’s too late. Schedule some time in the afternoon and set a timer to remind you that, once the time has elapsed, it’s time to move on to something else.
Switch to Full-Screen Mode
This is another simple but genius idea to help you focus on exactly one task at a time, particularly when you are working. Instead of opening up lots of tabs and multiple pop-up windows on your computer, limit yourself to one – and use full-screen mode.
By doing so, your eyes – and brain – will be forced to pay exclusive attention to what is in front of them. This also means that you won’t be distracted by the icons of other apps, the content of other tabs, or even by checking the time constantly on your screen.
Enhance Your Focus at Work, Every Day
Achieving and maintaining good focus levels at work is paramount if you want to boost your productivity, motivation, and efficiency. However, losing focus and concentration is incredibly common, especially if you are a fan of multitasking.
While, during a typical working day, you might need to juggle lots of things simultaneously, it’s important to set aside some focused time each day. If you, like most people, find yourself particularly fresh and productive in the morning, then use the first hours of the day to focus on priority tasks.
If you are struggling with maintaining focus, Impro can help. At Impro, we empower employees with useful tools that can help them to work better, smarter, and more efficiently by focusing on what matters to them. Find out more about us and how we can help your business by visiting our website today.