How To Develop Focus and Increase Your Concentration

Learn to increase your concentration and develop focus!

Because to be more productive, you need to train your focus.

Learn how to get your tasks done in half the time so you can focus on the important things in your life, like having more free time, more time for family and kids, and just getting things done!

Let’s start!

Why Is Focus Important?

Focus is important because everybody fights for your attention.

Most people have information overload and get bombarded with countless distractions everywhere they go. See newspapers with sensational headlines, social media designed to get you addicted, and websites full of pop-up ads.

If you want to increase your productivity, you need to keep your attention!

That’s why it’s essential to develop your focus!

How To Develop Your Focus And Attention

Let’s begin to develop your focus and attention!

1. Make a list of everything

Make a list of everything you have to do.

Then, decide and place everything in these four categories:

What can you just delete or let go?
What would you like to do, but it can be postponed till next week, month, or year?
What do you need to finish today or this week?
What is the one thing that you need to finish today? Your most important task!

Then do your most important task first!

2. Do Focus Work First

Do your most important tasks first! Especially if the task requires a lot of brainpower, like writing a book or an article, and you need a lot of focus to finish the task.

The work that isn’t important for your survival can wait!

Answering another email will not make a huge difference in your life. Creating an outstanding product, book, article, or presentation might change your life.

3. Single Task

Stop Multitasking. Focus only on one thing and do it with complete focus.

That means doing only one task at a time – that’s why it’s called a single task!

This is essential, even if it’s not about work, but your free time. If you watch a movie, concentrate on the movie and don’t check your phone. Focus on the movie, or quit watching it. Focus. Single task.

Otherwise, you get your brain addicted to distractions the minute you are a little bit bored or a challenge is too difficult.

Single task and train your focus!

Don’t run away!

4. Use The Pomodoro Technique

Use the Pomodoro Technique developed by Francesco Cirillo.

You decide on one task that you want to work on.
Traditionally, you set a timer to 25 minutes.
You work on the task.
You end the work when the timer rings and take a short break for 5 minutes. After four Pomodoros, you take a more extended 15-minute break.
After each break, you return to step 2.

5. Have The Same Routine Every Day

We are creatures of habit. The less time you have to think about what to do next, the better it is.

That’s why it’s best to have the same routine every day. Unless, of course, your current routine isn’t productive. Then, change it up.

For example, Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, have the same morning routine each day, and so on.

The more productive routines you have, the easier it is to get stuff done.

For example, if you only work on your most important tasks whenever you feel like it, there will be days when you forget to work on them. But if you instead work on your most important task every day at 9 a.m., it’s easy to do it.

Don’t let it be an accident that you are productive. Create your own destiny. Have the same routine every day!

6. Go To Neutral Every Night

Clean your home and prepare for the next day before you go to bed.

You will wake up to a clean and well-ordered household the next day. This way, you can start the new day with a smile on your face and go right to work.

You can even use this as your wind-down routine at night. Instead of browsing social media or watching another movie right before you go to bed, clean up your home!

7. Get Plenty Of Quality Sleep

Make sure to get plenty of quality sleep each night because a good night’s sleep is the best debugger ever made.

For the best quality sleep, get the right amount of sleep, exercise daily, go to bed at the same time every day, make your room cold, quiet, dark, have no screens in bed, and drink no coffee after four p.m.

Sleep is vital because if you are tired all day, you can’t get shit done!

Track your sleep for a few days. Write down how many hours you sleep each night and how you feel afterward.

You might find out that you are sleep-deprived most of the time. If that’s the case, make sure to increase the quality and length of your sleep for the next few days and permanently!

For more, read How to improve your sleep and wake up early!

8. Use meditation and mindfulness

Develop your focus through meditation and mindfulness practices.

Try this meditation practice:

Find a quiet place, sit down for two to ten minutes, and focus on your breathing!

Breathe in and count one, breathe out and count two, breathe in and count three, breathe out and count four, till you are at ten. Then restart with one.

You might notice that your mind wanders and that you stop counting or that you count till twenty-six. That’s okay. It’s not about doing it perfectly. It’s about doing it. With time and practice, you will get better and increase your ability to focus.

Or try this mindfulness practice:

When you eat a meal alone, focus on eating the meal and don’t watch a video, hear music, or browse social media. Instead, pay attention to what you are doing.

What do you eat?
How does it taste?
What texture does it have?
How long do you need to chew each piece?

Focus on what you eat and how it feels. That’s how you develop mindfulness and develop your focus to concentrate on a single task.

9. Use focus music

Brain FM

Music designed for the brain to enhance focus, relaxation, meditation, naps, and sleep within 10 to 15 minutes of use.

Spotify and YouTube playlists

Search on Spotify or YouTube after focus, concentration, or study playlists and use what you like. You can even create your own playlists. But do not get distracted by searching for these focus and concentration playlists.

10. Become hard to reach

Make it hard for others to reach you.

Otherwise, you get distracted:

You work on an important presentation, but a work colleague calls you? Boom, your focus is gone, and getting back to work after the call is challenging.
You want to write a book, but a friend invites you to lunch? Boom, you go to lunch with your friend instead of writing your important book.
You want to create a new product for your business, but you are constantly bombarded with emails? Boom, emails are more important than your new product.

Make it difficult for others to interrupt you and become hard to reach!

How to be hard to reach?

Have office hours. During these hours, others can call you or swing by your office. The rest of the day, you are not available.
Check your email only once a day or even once a week, if possible. Use autoresponders to announce when you will check your emails.
Put your phone on the flight or do not disturb mode. Or don’t take it with you at all.
Take some alone or quiet time and go to another city or country to think and work.