How To Focus: The Complete 9-Step Sequence

Time is your most precious resource.

Not being able to focus on your tasks or work is making you waste your day again and again.

Today is the day you teach your brain how to ignore distractions and pay attention to the important tasks on your to-do list.

Many people think that maintaining focus has gotten harder in a world full of addictive social media apps.

Whilst mostly true, your mind still has access to the same techniques used by other highly focused people to do deep work.

1. Focus on one task

One way to not getting anything done is to try and do too many things at once!

2. Take a short break

Taking a 5-minute break every 30 minutes is the best way to keep from getting fatigued too quickly.

3. Block phone calls

A great way to improve your focus is to block distractions - especially phone calls.

4. Practice mindfulness meditation

Meditating first thing every morning clears the mind and prepares you for a good session of focussed deep work.

5. Observe your attention span

Don't let too much time pass where you're not aware of what you're doing. Mindlessly scrolling for hours is an easy way to waste a day.

6. Use the Pomodoro technique

One study tip that students seem to swear by is using the Pomodoro technique whereby you working in blocks of 25 minutes with breaks of 5 minutes.

7. Set goals

Writing down your goals will help remind you why you need to focus and provide the motivation you need to do it.

8. Sleep more

Every day you should ensure you get 7-8 hours of sleep if you don't want your productivity to suffer.

9. Use lists

Lists are a great way of dumping all the to-do's from your brain and giving you more mental headspace to focus on just the one thing at a time.

The golden rule from all of this is to avoid multi-tasking and do just one thing at a time.