How to Improve Your Focus
It almost feels like the ability to focus concentrate is a lost art in today’s digital world. Constant interruptions by notifications from our multitude of apps can be catastrophic for productivity and focus.
A recent study reported that we experience around 60 interruptions in an average 8-hour workday. And a study at London’s Institute of Psychiatry found that constant interruptions can have the same effect as losing a night’s sleep.
No wonder so many people feel tired all the time!
But the good news is that focus is a mental muscle. The more you work on building it up, the stronger it gets! So if you feel—like so many of us—that you can’t concentrate as much as you used to when you were younger, you can build it back up!
So let’s look at some strategies to improve focus so you can sit down, get some work done, and even kick some of your personal goals!
Keeping Focused: Use Notifications Sparingly
First of all, if you haven’t done so yet, make sure you turn off as many notifications as possible to reduce the number of distractions you experience in your day.
Think of your focus as a spotlight and you want to turn it to the essential things and not scatter the light uselessly on every notification your phone throws at you.
You can also think of notifications as the privilege to interrupt you. Who or which apps get to have that privilege?
Retraining Your Brain
I found it helpful to retrain my brain to focus with this exercise from Neuropsychologist Kim Willment.
She suggests reading for thirty minutes with a timer set to go off every 5 minutes. When it goes off, ask yourself if your mind has wandered. If it has, re-focus on your reading and continue to the next alarm. Rinse and repeat.
Doing this exercise helps to retrain your brain to monitor if your mind is wandering and then return to focusing on a single task. It’s a huge part of being able to concentrate and focus during your day!
After a series of strokes three years ago, I found this exercise helpful in retraining my brain, and perhaps it will help you too!
Learn To Re-Focus Quickly After An Interruption
The following strategy is to improve your mindfulness and to re-focus quickly. As it turns out, focusing on the present moment and practicing mindfulness rewires the brain so that your ability to focus is stronger in everyday life!
You can use numerous mindfulness apps, but one quick strategy I use is ‘box breathing.’ It’s a great stress reliever, and it helps you to re-centre yourself very quickly.
I use this technique when I notice that my focus has slipped off if I need to get my concentration back after an interruption. US Navy Seals use box breathing and can undoubtedly be calm and focused under extreme circumstances!
So here’s how you do it:
- Sit upright and inhale slowly.
- While you count to 4 in your head, hold your breath for a count of four.
- Exhale through your mouth to a count of four.
- Hold your breath for four seconds.
- Repeat this a few times.
I find picturing the box or square in my mind with each step helps me to focus on the activity. I used this technique as a stress reliever when my daughter was critically ill and fighting leukaemia.
Still, I also noticed a vast improvement in my concentration and ability to focus, so I now use it regularly as a way to quickly re-focus.
I encourage you to try these strategies this week. It’ll be much easier to get your work or activities done when you can concentrate and focus for blocks of time!
