Staying focused seemed to be a lost art. We have so many things vying for our attention and we want to get them all done NOW. Not in 10 minutes and if we could we would do them yesterday and all at once. We actually feel a sense of reward for multitasking and it makes us feel super important. The downside is that it is actually has been proven to lower our IQ. This is why you look back and say, how could I have made that mistake? I know better than that. I didn’t even notice!

I understand that there are times that we all have to multitask and the goal is not to NEVER do it but the goal should be to learn to focus when it is necessary. Let’s say when you have an important presentation coming up and you need to study or put together the PowerPoint. Let’s face it, we have all made more mistakes than we have wanted to that have come out in front of a room. Don’t beat yourself up. Just learn to have a little more focus. Here are 3 tips that will help you:

3 Focus Tips!

Get Your Creative Work Done First – You’ve probably noticed that by the end of the day you feel a little trained mentally, you may not be able to make decision as quickly and you just want to unplug. This is often because we do the mind numbing tasks first and leave the creative tasks to the end of the day. Every decision that we make causes our brains to be tired and this is why it is important to do the creative tasks in the beginning!

Make Sure You Allocate Your Time Deliberately – Since we have so little time of complete focus, we need to make sure we are getting the most out of the focused time. Schedule in the important tasks and make sure that all distractions are OFF. That means the phone, email notifications, kids (lol) and anything else. These hours are precious so make sure you get it in.

Your Brain is Like a Muscle So Treat It Like One – In our society, we have trained our brains to multitask. It almost feels WRONG to do one thing at a time. We feel lazy and unproductive when only one thing is on our plate so we add more onto it. The only want to get back to being more focused is to train our brains like a muscle. The more time that we spend being focused and getting things done, the more that will become the norm!

So, take the plunge and start learning to focus again. What focus tips do you have? Feel free to share!