How to Maintain Focus on a Daily Basis

To boost your productivity, focus, and accomplish tasks that will give you the greatest reward, you need to adopt the Pareto principle and focus on 20% of tasks that will yield 80% of your desired result. This is the place of the highest return on effort applied.

To do that, you need to focus on tasks that count. Do not seek the easy way out, tackling cheap items that will give you the satisfaction of ticking them off your list, rather than the high-importance tasks (usually the most feared) that we leave to the last.

The tips below will help point you in the right direction toward focusing your effort on things that count the most.

MAKE A TO-DO-LIST
Jot down all the things you need to accomplish in your day. Don’t trust your brain to remember everything. Your number one priority each day should be to list out all the things you want to do during that day. Do that before you dive into the day. Of course, you may forget some items. Add them as you go along. Free your brain to think rather than store information.

SET PRIORITIES
Rearrange your To-Do list based on priorities. There will always be multiple things to do, even multiple urgent things to do. Sort the items into the following groups:

1.       High Importance/High Urgency

2.       High Importance/Low Urgency

3.       Low Importance/High Urgency

4.       Low Importance/Low Urgency

Arrange it in that order. Handle the High Importance/High Urgency tasks first, starting with the most important/critical. Then move to High Importance/Low Urgency ones,  again starting with the most important/critical. Move to Low Importance/High Urgency if you have the time, or delegate them. Delegate the Low Importance/Low Urgency tasks or postpone them indefinitely.

WORK ON ONE THING AT A TIME
This is the make-or-break point. If you flit from activity to activity, you will become bogged down by excess baggage. Stay focused on one thing at a time to increase the pace and efficiency at which you work.

TAKE SHORT STRETCH BREAKS
Take stretch breaks of about 5 – 10 minutes after working for 30 or 45 minutes of working to refresh your eyes and brain. Go for a walk, take in some fresh air, and clear your brain.

KEEP YOUR WORK AREA TIDY
It is hard to focus with piles of paperwork, brochures, and junk food wrappers strewn all over your desk. Organizing your thoughts starts with an organized workspace. Keep things where you can find them. If you are not working on an item, keep them out of view.

REDUCE DISTRACTIONS
This is a cousin to working on one task at a time. These few tips will help (I am still working on them too):

• Minimize windows of other computer programs you are not using
• Turn off instant messengers,
• Close e-mail ( or you can set it to offline, and go online at intervals when you are ready to attend to new emails).
• Send your phone to voice mail

To help you stay focused on the task at hand, you need to unplug from the outside world and keep your eyes on the task. That way you work faster and more accurately. That will free up time for other tasks, with still time left for social interactions. Work hard, play hard. There is a time for everything under the sun. Don’t mix them up.