Seven strategies to improve your focus right now
Because we're worse than goldfish.
Between 2001 and 2013, researchers measured a 33% downgrade in average attention span. From 12 to 8 seconds. Now goldfish attention spans are swimming just ahead of ours at 9 seconds.
You probably know the culprit already. The report states: “Heavy multi-screeners find it difficult to filter out irrelevant stimuli — they’re more easily distracted by multiple streams of media,”. So technology, then. And that was in 2013 .
At work, when you combine the phone, the 'puter, the chat about that colleague and the offer of a cup of something, we have a lot of distractions to deal with. Therefore it's of little surprise that one of the biggest requests I get from clients is to help focus and cut out the noise at work.
Still with me? Let's do some maths on all these distractions.
We know that when distracted by an unimportant email, it takes just over a minute to get back into the task at hand.
So, if you're noticing an email every 5 minutes, that's 12 minutes an hour, about 1.5h each day and just under 8 hours per week.
That's a day, each week where you could be doing fun stuff, but instead, are reading spam. And that's just email.
Our brains don't help
Also, when you're slightly resisting (even on a subconscious level) a task, it's even more likely you'll jump ship. Why wouldn't you? Just a few taps or clicks away from you right now are a myriad of more exciting videos and photos that will release a few precious drops of dopamine (your feel-good hormone) giving you temporary respite from the TPS reports or whatever you're meant to be (but not) doing.
Here's the thing: you probably haven't been taught how to focus.
I remember when I was preparing for my first set of exams, all of a sudden I was expected to be able to stay doing something for hours at a time as if by magic. In reality, most of us aren't taught how to focus, but we are taught how to be distracted by all of the beautiful bells, whistles and unicorns coming out of our devices.
There are things you can do to fire up your focus though, here are some to get started:
1) Get your morning routine right.
You'll know the days when you're going to need to enter a deep state of focus, so start right.
Have a morning that sets your mind up for a day of non-distraction.
Don't check your phone when you wake up. Don't read emails. Reading emails first thing might feel productive, but what's filling your inbox can cause stress which will carry into your day - and you usually can't do anything about unhappy emails until you're at work anyway. Resist the temptation and wait.
Meditate if that's your thing (I recommend mindfulness as a good place to start), and after that, try and keep a singular focus as much as you can. When you're eating breakfast, eat breakfast. Don't sip coffee with one hand and scroll your feed with the other. Information will bombard you as you go about your day (fact: on a daily basis we're subjected to more information than someone in the 15th century would see in their entire life), so give your mind a break before you leave the house.
The first few hours of the day set up your mental state for how the day is going to go. When you start with a clear mind that isn't too busy, it's more likely it is that you'll be able to keep focused through the day.
2) Respect the phone.
Our phones are pretty much behind all of our focus woes, so do the right thing and PUT IT IN THE ROOM NEXT DOOR.
Seriously. Studies have shown that phones even steal attention when they're on silent. Participants were set tests requiring full attention. Some were told to set phones on silent and keep them nearby, others were told to put them next door. The owners of the phones in other rooms 'significantly outperformed' the others.
This is because smartphones occupy what's called a "privileged attentional space" in your mind. This is similar to the sound of your own name - so basically, the smartphone being nearby can take up the same type of attention as if you're chatting to someone and you hear your name being mentioned nearby. Huh, what?
If it just has to be on you and you do check it, make sure you're aware of why you're going to check it. Perusing at your notifications opens up a can of distracted worms, so try and avoid having a peek just for the sake of it.
3) Practice present moment awareness.
Distractions don't have to just be external, sometimes we can lose hours sat doing one thing with our minds elsewhere replaying old memories or making up stories of the future.
I used to do this a lot when reading books; I'd find myself repeatedly having to re-read pages over and over because my mind wasn't so keen on the reading. We all do it, a recent Harvard study stated that our minds wander a whopping 47% of the time.
The practice of mindfulness teaches you how to keep yourself immersed in your direct experience and also makes you much more aware of how your own mind works (some people call this meta-awareness). This is important because once you begin to see how often and what your mind is drawn away by, you'll be in a better position to do something about it.
What's more, it's been recorded that the more someone practices mindfulness, the more the part of the brain that deals with attention and focus grows.
4) Stop multitasking. Now.
This includes messaging on slack, or answering emails as they appear. Although there is a lot of love for multi-tasking out there, we know that it does not equate to productive work, in fact, continually switching between tasks has been shown to double the amount of time they take to complete versus just sticking with one task from start to finish.
5) Take clever breaks.
Lots of people have a tendency to (especially with looming deadlines) just hammer out work until it's done, but the science says that this gets in the way of progress: when we're hard at it, we're using our pre-frontal cortex to make hundreds (if not thousands) of micro decisions, which eventually leads to 'decision fatigue'. Studies have shown this leads to simplistic (i.e. worse) decision-making and procrastination. There is no golden rule in terms of timing, but a good place to start is to make sure you take a break at least every 90 minutes - which may sound like a lot, but basically means a 1h lunch break, and 15 minutes in the morning and afternoon. However, there is a golden rule, or at least 3 for what you should do during your break. Do something you actually want to do, that isn't a chore, and that is habitual and low-effort.
Perhaps listening to a (non-work related) ted talk or podcast, going for a walk, meditating or some light exercise, but give your mind a BREAK non an overload of even more tidbits of information (hello social media).
6) Install blockers on your computer.
It's so easy to fire up reddit or youtube or whatever, that sometimes we do it without realising until deeply immersed in whatever is funny thing is happening that day, so an excellent alternative is using software that will block out distractions - I use 'Cold Turkey', but there are others out there too.
7) Be kind to the mind.
It's very normal to start a focus session with Bruce Lee like aspirations, only to quickly find that you're making your way through your mates birthday on Instagram and your work has fly-kicked it's way out the window. It's essential that when you realise you've been distracted, you don't beat yourself up about it, this is likely to be a new way of trying to achieve focus, so you're going to have to break the mental chains your old habits have put in place.
When you notice you've been distracted, as best you can, quickly accept that it's happened and move back to what you were doing before, don't wallow. Every time you do this successfully you should be proud, you're getting better at focusing.
What you have here is just the start, there are many more strategies to improve focus. Remember: Your focus ability isn’t a magical power you’re graced with from birth. You have to train it, it’s not hard, you’ve just got to stick with it.
If you want to read more about focus, I wholly recommend Chris Bailey's 'Hyperfocus' or Carl Newport's 'Deep Work'.