Picture a random day where you are doing some important work and suddenly you get a Facebook or Instagram notification. You’re thinking that you’ll probably open it for a second and then get back to work.
As it turns out that you end up spending an hour or so just on your mobile device rather than keeping your mind focused on your work. Sounds familiar? Well don’t worry, we have all done that.
When you are facing the issue of focus retention where you can’t stay focused on your work which results in you being less productive. This steals your valuable time away from you and all of your previous efforts are wasted because you didn’t deliver on time.
These notifications and distractions are all around us nowadays because we have so much stuff just buzzing and beeping away at us 24/7. This means that it’s really up to us if we want to stay focused and lead a productive day.
Have no idea how to do that? Here are 10 different ways you can stay focused at work:
7 Different Ways to Get Your Mind Focused on Work
1. Find Fun in the Activities that You Do
Everyone’s work is important and when it comes to official assignments, there’s no task big or small. But any task or assignment can take a toll on someone’s focus and they need to put their mind at ease from time to time. But what if you started enjoying the work that you do?
Yeah yeah, we know that’s not possible, but hear me out.
Many people around the world love the work that you do. They might’ve waited all their lives to do it, they would be paid handsomely, or they allow their creativity and imagination to run wild and mold the output into something that they wanted and not what the scope sheet said.
These are the people that don’t stick to the script and always find ways to challenge themselves over and over. This creative mindset and actual interest in their work keep them focused and not make their mind wander all the time.
2. Select the Best Chair and Table Combination
Many people around the world, find their work extremely difficult and stressful even when they are sitting on their seats all day. That makes all of us TBH. To fix this, you need to find the perfect seat and a glorious table that will let you sit and work all day, and not be a back-pain patient at the end of the day.
3. Organize your Work Station
Nowadays, we have so much stuff all around us that we can get distracted by moving our eyes even an inch from our screen. You should fix that. Pile up your things using any criteria you like and put all of the stuff that you don’t require every day in drawers or shelves.
Also, you should have an area dedicated to food and drink so that when you need to use any of those things, you can just stretch your arm to that dedicated place and consume it without losing focus.
4. De-Clutter your Computer Desktop too
You can always have a minimal desk that is spotless and pretty outstanding on the minimalism scale, but your computer desktop junk also counts in your report. Digital messes with unsorted files and folders also count as clutter which can be very distracting when you are trying to focus.
You should keep a cleaning regime, where you would clean your computer desktop every week. You can sort all of the files using different parameters more suited to your needs and requirements. Make your screen more streamlined and turn your machine into an organizational force to be reckoned with.
5. Prioritize Tasks
Studies show that the first hour at work is when the employees are the most productive. That is because of the fact that they just came from home and they are well-rested.
So, in order to be more productive and stress-free throughout the day, perform your most difficult tasks of the day in that first hour. Follow these tasks with less pressuring work and end the day with the tasks that you consider the most boring among all of them.
This strategy will keep you prioritizing your daily tasks and stop you from wasting your time on less important activities throughout the day.
6. Set Your Status to “Busy”
You are not legally required to answer every call, message or notification that appears on your devices. We know how important that Instagram post was and how it would’ve killed you if you didn’t like it right away. Just slow your roll. You need to block all of that digital noise during your work hours.
There are a lot of ways you can do that. For example, for calls and messages, you can set your phone to DND mode, where you’ll only get notifications from your utmost Favorite contacts that can’t be ignored. You can also opt for a Voicemail service, but it’s not the 20th century and no one is really sending you one.
For IM, you can set your status to Busy or you can even turn your notifications off to not get distracted every time they message you.
7. Stay Well Away from Social Media
All of your social media handles and their notifications are not more important than your work unless you’re a TikTok star or a Vlogger of some kind.
Being a part of the organizational paradigm, you need to discipline yourself enough that you check all of these notifications only when there is ample free time at your hand.
Why? Because you might think that you’ll only check those for a minute or so but everything on there, is designed to keep you busy for as long as possible. This is why it is important that you stay away from these applications.
Conclusion
You just have to keep in mind that you are surrounded by a million different distractions when you are at work. Anything can be a distraction if you let it be one.
So, its entirely up to you if you want to stay focused on your work activities. Just apply these practices in your work activities and you’ll be the productivity king at the office.
