“That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” Steve Jobs.

Recent research by Pension provider Nest, found that the average adult can concentrate on a task for 17 minutes and 10 seconds. But nearly half of 18 to 24-year-olds said they lose focus in under a minute, while only seven per cent of 65s and over said the same. Social media was blamed with 39 per cent saying they turned to their phone when they lost interest in something.

Survey participants said they could keep focused during a chat with their partner for 19 minutes and 17 seconds but in a work meeting that drops to 17 and a half minutes. More than a third said their attention span had worsened in recent years. Sorting out finances occupied an average 20 minutes and work tasks 20 minutes 40 seconds. Distractions from mobile phones, tiredness and stress were among the top reasons adults admitted to losing concentration, the study revealed.

The busyness of modern life presents us with countless different priorities requiring our attention. It’s therefore important that we maintain a sharp focus on our key priorities. When we focus it has a great impact on goal achievement and helps to contribute to increased self-esteem, confidence and happiness levels.

Being focused enables us to make the best use of our time and to manage distractions. It helps us to take action that brings us the most effective results, ones that are aligned with our true desires and values. When we set goals, it’s a good practice to picture in our mind, how we would like things to look in the end. Effectively, we are starting an action period with a vision of an outcome in mind.

Having a sharp focus enables us to make the best choices and develop habits and behaviours that will help us to achieve our goals in life. Like any other behaviour, being focused is a habit and can be honed with practice and consistent action.

In order to become more focused, you must first of all decide what it is that is vital to you in life, your most important priorities and goals. You can also figure out the behaviours and strategies that will bring you the results that you desire.

To avoid splitting our energy and to maximise our effectiveness, a great habit to adopt is to focus on one task at a time. Having a single focus and ensuring that we complete tasks before we move onto something else.

If we use our attention and energy in this way, concentrating all our mental power on a single task, we will see a substantial increase in our productivity and efficiency. It also means that we use less energy. Our increased effectiveness will quite often energise us.

When we adopt this kind of mental discipline, we may find ourselves ‘in the zone’ totally immersed in what we’re doing in that particular moment. We get into a state of flow and become less conscious of time and what is going on around us.

There are a few obstacles that we have to overcome in order to become more focused: –

Lack of clarity.

We may not have a clear sense of what we want to achieve or what our most important priorities are. We may not be clear on the direction in which we are heading. In order to deal with this, it’s good to spend some time tuning into what we really want and then create some clear goals. This helps us to devise focused action plans.

Distractions.

There may be a variety of things that distract us in the environments in which we operate. We may work in an office that’s open-plan. As such we may have people who distract us by chatting or being loud when talking on the phone. Telephone calls and email notifications and technology in general may distract us or interrupt our focus and train of thought. It will be beneficial to work out some strategies to minimise the impact of interruptions by switching off technology and notifications when you have a big task to complete. You may also explore if it is possible to work in a quiet area occasionally when you have to do something that requires total concentration.

Spread too thin.

We may try and do too much in the amount of time available. This may mean that we are pulled in various directions and feel that we don’t have full understanding of our most important priorities. In such circumstances we may consider reducing the length of our to do lists. We can think about if there are certain tasks that we can stop doing to free up some time. We can also review if there are some tasks or projects that we can delegate to others.

This week, why not pause for a few moments and consider what action you can take to become more focused.

To arrange a free no obligation consultation, please contact Stephen Pauley via the contact form or by e mail: Stephen@befirstclass.co.uk