Constantly losing your focus? Consider these helpful remedies
It’s not always easy to stay focused in the modern world of ours. For example, the marketing industry is a multi-billion dollar enterprise that focuses entirely on trying to attract your attention.
Right now, hordes of individuals are working hard to make sure you pay attention to them and nothing else, except for maybe earning the money to pay them with. Even now, this post and this title and the image used was designed to attract your attention. We offer a value-add by the way of helpful information, but even then, attention is attention and it’s in limited supply.
For this reason, many of us feel our focus is frayed. The accessibility of modern entertainment also means that the lull periods of quiet time in our lives can easily be filled. You might not have stood in a queue in the last five years without checking your phone or otherwise occupying yourself.
If you find that you’re constantly losing your focus and you’re not certain where to go from there, you may find that your approach to work and daily management is impeded. There are ways to overcome this, but it takes a little time to achieve. So, let us get started with some advice, shall we?
Try to limit social media use
Social media platforms are designed to keep you scrolling through content that never ends, and if you’ve ever found yourself watching TikToks, reels or shorts until the early hours of the morning, they’ve got you.
The clever algorithms learn exactly what makes you stop, engage, and then serve more of that content to keep you on the platform as long as possible. Moreover, if it can make you mad or get into comment arguments, that’s all the better for the,. Worse, this can gradually chip away at our ability to focus on tasks that need deeper thought and sustained attention.
You might consider setting some boundaries around how you use these platforms. Some people find it helpful to delete the apps from their phones and only check them on a computer, but we’re not going to tell you to do that as an adult who can make your own decisions.
Some can prefer using the built-in screen time limits or picking specific times of day when they allow themselves to check their accounts. Taking entire days away from social media could help reset your attention span and work on your focus a little more, without some tech bro in Silicon Valley sapping away all your mental energy.
Have a prepatory focus ritual
Starting work without any kind of transition often leaves us open to distraction or not really getting into “the gear” we need to. Maybe you find it’s 11am and you’ve done almost nothing, and you want to get out of that. Having a small focus ritual can signal to your brain that it’s time to concentrate, which creates a mental separation between unfocused time and focused time.
Your ritual doesn’t need to be anything intense, and while heading to the gym before work can be great, you don’t always have to do that. It could involve clearing your workspace, preparing a favorite drink, writing down the three most important tasks you want to accomplish, or simply setting a timer to shake off the cobwebs. Some people enjoy lighting a candle or playing a particular piece of music. Some even have coffee or nicotine pouches handy. The specific actions probably matter less than doing them consistently and keeping good habits.
Read more books
Books ask for a type of sustained attention that most modern media simply doesn’t require. When reading, we need to hold information in mind, hold ideas across many pages, and visualize concepts and scenes that are only described through words, which is great for our imaginations. This gives our focus muscles a genuine workout, and it also helps you avoid the constant distractions we’re used to elsewhere.
You might want to start with books you genuinely enjoy rather than ones you feel you should read, don’t worry, you don’t need to read War and Peace right this moment. Reading should feel rewarding and enjoyable, not like another chore on your to-do list, but you’ll find that starting with the small stuff helps you build to much more substantive novels as well. If you haven’t read much recently, starting with just ten minutes a day and really help to build up your reading time and benefit as necessary.
Of course, reading before bed also has the added benefit of potentially improving sleep quality by avoiding the screen light that can harm your usual melatonin production. If you want to improve your focus, set set times to read for, and stick to it. It will work.
Use calm music to guide your attention
The right background music can create an environment that really does assist you with concentration. Instrumental music without lyrics usually works best for most people especially if they’re writing and have to think, as lyrics tend to distract us for obvious reasons.
So, head to your streaming app and set up a playlist of classical pieces, ambient sounds, gentle nature recordings, or specially designed focus playlists that might help mask distracting noises and make your home office more inviting during that morning. If we had to make a suggestions, look to artist such as Brian Eno (known as the ambient master) or even video game soundtracks which have been specifically designed not to take the focus away from a player navigating through a virtual world.
It’s worth experimenting to discover what works for your particular brain as not everyone is going to like working to the same stuff of course. If you prefer complete silence, maybe even purchasing some memory foam earplugs so the busy road outside your window doesn’t harm you could be helpful.
Set time blocks and breaks for productive work
Time blocks are very handy, because working in defined intervals with planned breaks between them means you’e not trying to white-knucle your focus throughout the hole day, which can feel like lying on a bench press machine holding the weights with your arms outstretched for hours. Instead, think of focus as a kind of rep-based exercise.
The popular “Pomodoro Technique” suggests 25 minutes of focused work followed by a 5-minute break, but you could adjust these based on your own preferences. For example, if you’re working from home but your newborn is crying, well of course, that’s a break you need to take.
The important part is fully committing to your task during work periods and then fully disengaging during breaks, as this helps you get so much more done and will prevent you from cross-pollinating each approach with distraction or burnout. You might close your email, silence notifications, and remove other distractions during work time for example, then during breaks, it helps to stand up, move around, look out a window, or do something else that gives your focusing faculties a proper rest.
Use the momentum of routine
People think a routine is restrictive, but actually, having one can easily reduce the decision fatigue that often leads to distraction. When you’ve put in place patterns for when and how you do certain types of work, you don’t need to decide each day whether to do them or how to approach them, and better yet you don’t have to summon the momentum for each, it’s just part of your daily cycle.
As such, you could try scheduling your most focus-intensive tasks for the time of day when you naturally concentrate best. For most people, this tends to be in the morning, but your personal rhythm might be a little different and that’s fine. This is where you can run a sort of test on yourself because paying attention to when you feel most clear-headed and building your schedule around those hours could help you get your best work done at the most optimal time.
Of course, it’s not just about work routines either, as when you eat and sleep can have a major impact on how well you feel day to day, so don’t discount that.
Work on your sleep health
It’s true what our parents told us, sleep quality really does alter how well we can focus during waking hours. During deep sleep, our brains help to cement our learning and clear out waste products that build up while we’re awake, and so it’s likely this should be your first port of call if focus is poor and you always feel tired.
Putting in place a reasonably consistent sleep schedule will help you to feel much more present and focused each day, and your working memory will improve too. You’ll also have more self-discipline because you have better executive control, so reaching for your phone unless necessary is something you can more easily resist. Going to bed and waking up at roughly the same time each day tends to improve sleep quality, even if the total hours remain the same.
With this advice, we hope you can restore your focus and potentially reclaim your daily hours for the better.
