How To Stay Focused: 10 Tips To Improve Focus
Do you struggle to stay focused for long periods of time? Do you struggle with maintaining a high level of focus? Here are 10 tips to improve focus and stay focused!
Work in 2-hour blocks.
Much researches have proven that humans can achieve a high level of focus for up to 2 hours. After 2 hours their performance will drop. Less clear judgment, less access to short and long-term memory, worse decision making, and much more. This is why it’s highly recommended to stop, take a break, walk away, and came back for another high focus 2-hour session.
Diet
There are many ‘superfoods’ that can help you boost focus. Nuts, berries, plenty of water. I have been experimenting with supplements and I have been enjoying Four Sigmatic Mushroom Tea very much. What I would recommend is looking to remove things out of your diet that disrupts your focus over temporarily improving it. Food with high levels of fat, sodium, sugar, and caffeine. Remove those out of your diet and you will improve your focus tremendously.
Exercise
This one is very practical. If you wake up in the morning and exercise you will start your day off with a bang! It gives you all the positive and productive hormones you need to perform with focus. Now if you can also finish that exercise off with a cold shower, you’re really killing it!
Preparation
Everyone has been through these sessions of chaos. Forgot the coffee, where did I put my pen, lost my notebook and why is my internet not working. An easy way to prevent frustrations that will pull you out of your focus is by preparing your sessions. Make sure you have water, fruit, a notebook, pens, and everything works like it should before you start your session.
No distractions
That frigging smartphone. Always there, lurking, trying to pull is in. Giving us notifications and hitting us with that sweet dopamine. You know what to do right? Get that smartphone out of your sight. If you have to have it in your environment, make sure you tell people who need you to CALL you and not text you. This means you can turn your notifications off, all of them. Something I highly recommend doing, even outside of high focus environments.
Learn to say no
This will not only improve your performance but your life. There are always people who require our help, advice or just to listen to them. Set your boundaries and protect them. Learn to say no. Tell them that during this 2-hour schedule you will not be available for anything because you need to focus. Remember: if you don’t respect your own time and schedule, other people won’t respect it either.
Set goals and intentions
It’s hard to stay focused without clear goals. What are you actually working on? What are some focus points? What are the things that you would like to improve your performance? Once you write these down you’ll be surprised how many sessions you simply work, just to say you’re working. You need goals and intentions and I can help you with this!
Evaluate your focus
You just finished a session, it sucked. You got distracted constantly and you were on your phone half the time. It might seem best to just forget about these sessions as soon as possible, but nothing is further from the truth. These sessions tell you the blueprint to low focus. If you can go back to the moment you started preparing, you will know what you absolutely shouldn’t do next time. It has invaluable information that can help you to make adjustments for the next session.
Blueprint to high focus
So now you know what the blueprint to low focus. What is the blueprint to high focus? I’m fairly sure you had a session where you were performing at a high level. Tuned in, nothing was distracting you. Do you remember what you did differently in these sessions? No? Alright, here are a couple of tips. It starts at the moment you wake up. Make sure you have active mornings and only surround yourself with positive and uplifting input. The better you start your day the higher your focus.
Meditation
Lastly, meditation. It’s a gamechanger. Often, distraction comes from anxiety. Thoughts lingering in your head. Unresolved problems or inner conflict. Usually, we spent most our day trying to escape our thoughts instead of taking the time to process them. Meditation is your personal time in the day where you give yourself the luxury of processing thoughts instead of running away from them.
I hope some of these tips helped you. As always, I will be here to help you with any questions you have. Reach out to me on social media, @coachbahman on all socials, or schedule a free 30 min mindset coaching session with me.