We train our brain by the things we do. Research has shown our brains respond to repetition, it creates an expertise on things we do constantly do and thus reduces the time needed to do it. So imagine if you intentionally decided to create patterns in your days and weeks that help you train your brain how to stay focused.
The website Lumosity.com claims to be able to harness the power of neuroplasticity—the notion that the brain is malleable and changes in response to repeated activities—to improve its members’ cognitive skills and teach them how to stay focused. On the other side of neuroplasticity, scientists have hypothesized that the habit of surfing the web, hopping from page to page without alighting on anything for more than a moment, actually impairs our neurological ability to concentrate. In essence, the hypothesis is with unfettered use of internet content, especially social media, we are training our brains not to concentrate or to have shorter attention spans.
As leaders, fixing our attention on what’s truly important noticeably improves our productivity and overall capacity. Meanwhile, not knowing how to stay focused causes our talent and ability to atrophy.
Lack of concentration causes a leader to:
Waste time
The average person has between 35-40 hours of discretionary time per week, that’s roughly 5-6 hours per day of flex time that can be redirected to something productive. Discretionary time is time available when not working (assuming work is 8 hours a day), sleeping, eating, cleaning, or running errands. That equates to almost 2,000 hours per year. As leaders, wasted time is wasted potential.
Misuse resources
When we’re unfocused, we allocate our resources poorly. In any organization, resource management is a constraint every organization has to face, from the fortune 500 company to the momterprenuer, resources have to be managed for success.
So now how do we learn to focus? When planning your day or your week here are a few things to consider to help you streamline your schedule and increase your focus.
Train Yourself To Focus
- Limit your time on social media: it shouldn’t be the first thing you check in the morning. Instead, spend the first waking hours of your day away from a screen.
- Set goals for the day: Have key things that need to be accomplished per day. The mistake I’ve personally made in the past with this is planning to do 20 things in one day and feel unmotivated when in reality I only accomplish 3. So, set realistic goals based on your time capacity.
- Work on one goal at a time: I had mentioned earlier in this post how hopping from one page to the next trains our brains how not to focus. The logical remedy for that is to intentionally focus on one task before heading to the other.
- Don’t say ‘Yes’ to everything: Sometimes we say ‘yes’ to frivolous things as an escape mechanism or an emotional response that holds low or no rewards for our overall goals. Create a system that works for you by which you intentionally filter through opportunities that come your way.
- Clean work environment: If you have lots of paper, envelopes or items not related to the task ahead, clean everything from your work space so you can focus. This is the most obvious thing to do, but there is another desk to be cleaned: it’s the mental desk where decisions are made. The more decisions we make, the more tired we get. And this weakens our ability to make good decisions.