How to maintain focus at work

I can’t even spell this word (procrastinators) in order to start this post. But at one point we all have been in a situation where we found can’t focus at work by delaying the work and other things just keep piling until we have way too many things on our plate. Let me share with you my practices for working over this part of your life.

Prioritize your tasks

For any type of focus activity in this article make sure you prioritize your tasks. You can take double approach at this put the harder tasks on top and start working on them, and then as you progress to the easier tasks they will go faster. However, if you feel like that list is too long and too many things are piled up, when you finish writing the list pick the tasks that will take you the least amount of time to finish. For me this approach works better as i see that I’ve made a lot of progress on my list and I have the motivation to finalize the entire list.

Using old school notebook to focus at work

This one is quite simple. Grab a notebook, write down all the details that need to be done. My preferred choice of doing this is while having a cup of coffee in the morning. Don’t create a big list, the list can expand over the course of the day as some assignments get thrown at you. Now if you have any ideas about said activities you can add some explanation. As you finish parts from your daily list you can cross them or highlight them with different colors. For example, you can use green for done, orange for in progress and red or purple for not done (mark the not done at the end of the day).

Software for tracking work tasks

Trello and Asana are the two go to tools for teams, especially the online teams. But, these don’t have to be only for teams you can utilize them for yourself. I personally utilize Asana, it’s simple to create a task list (it even creates daily assignments list by default) and you can categorize your work. You can structure it to long term and short term, that way you’ll have a clearer picture of what can be done quicker and what will take more time. Bare in mind the long term list might be shorter sometime, but if you neglect your long term list, things might pile up.

Relocate to a suitable spot to increase focus at work

Not everyone can work with people and noise around them, even with headphones on sometimes it gets really hard to focus on work simply because there are people around you and some of them constantly have the question: “What are you doing?”. If you have an office space shut the door and there’s your silence to work, if you share your office with colleagues ask them to keep the conversation to a minimum or to take random chats outside of office. It might sound like you are douche but in reality you need that focus at work to do your job.

Break time (no device)

You need to take a break every once in a while, you can have few shorter breaks with your favorite beverage next to you. Stare into the mountains (if there are any around you) or trees, but focus on far sighted objects. This way you can rest your eyes and save yourself a visit to the ophthalmologist where you get to wear glasses or lenses. During break time you might also get some ideas or get going on the idea that you’ve been stuck on for some time. No device has multiple benefits including clearing your mind and maintaining focus at work.

Set a reward goal

Hear me out on this one, it works on a similar method as using software like Asana, it wiretaps into your brain and you are rewarding yourself for a job well done. Now, don’t abuse it, you need to do actual job and not something small and then saying oh I deserve a cookie for opening a document. Setting a goal can help you focus at work because you are looking forward to your reward for a job well done. You can reward yourself with short time off, coffee or anything that will motivate you and help you focus at work.