Learning how to stay focused can be a difficult task, especially in today’s world where there are distractions from all around us – social media, TV, work, family, relationships, and more. This is why understanding and learning how to stay focused is so important.
There are many situations in which knowing how to stay focused would help you greatly:
When you’re trying to pay off debt.
When you want to save more money, such as for retirement or for a vacation.
If you want to start a business on the side but feel like you aren’t focused enough to do so.
To focus better at work.
When you need to balance multiple things while staying focused on all of them, such as working and managing a family.
I’ve always been a very busy person, and learning how to stay focused on my goals and life has helped me to reach my goals and be happier. By knowing how to stay focused, I was able to successfully build a business on the side of my full-time job, I was able to work full-time and go to school full-time to earn my MBA, and more.
By staying focused, I’ve been able to concentrate on the task at hand and my goals so that I can be successful.
And, this is why it is important that you know how to stay focused as well.
By staying focused, you may finally be able to work towards paying pay off your debt.
By staying focused, you may finally be able stop living paycheck to paycheck.
By staying focused, you may finally be able to start that business you’ve been wanting to start.
And so on, and so on.
As you can see, learning how to stay focused can help you stay motivated and succeed with your goal.
Related content that will help you learn how to stay focused:
Here are my tips on how to stay focused:
Realize why you want to stay focused.
Whenever you have a tough time staying focused, you should think about why you need to focus. That reason is the goal you are working towards, and you’ll most likely be able to stay better focused because of that goal.
Through creating a list of your priorities, goals, and the things in life that are important to you, you’ll be able to focus better by eliminating the extra noise that is holding you back.
This is because you’ll know and see exactly what is important to you, and you’ll be able to better differentiate between things that are important and those that are not.
So, if your goal is to start a side business that will one day become your full-time business, you should think about this whenever working on your side business feels too difficult.
Another example would be if you are trying to pay off debt and you want to better focus on your debt payoff plan. If you want to stay better focused on your goal, you should think about why you want to pay off your debt, how you will feel once you reach your goal, and so on.
By thinking about your goal and what will happen once you reach your goal, you’ll be much more motivated to stay focused, even if times become hectic or if you don’t think that you have the energy to continue on.
Exercise often.
Exercising is great for many reasons, and one of them is that it can help you to stay focused.
Whenever I feel like I can’t focus on something, I like to go for a hike or walk my dog in order to clear my thoughts and to think better.
According to Harvard Medical School:
Exercise helps memory and thinking through both direct and indirect means. The benefits of exercise come directly from its ability to reduce insulin resistance, reduce inflammation, and stimulate the release of growth factors—chemicals in the brain that affect the health of brain cells… Indirectly, exercise improves mood and sleep, and reduces stress and anxiety.
To improve your focus, the recommendation is to regularly exercise, 30 minutes a session for five days a week.
Breaks are your friend if you want to learn how to stay focused.
Trying to focus TOO hard on a task can actually backfire.
Instead, you should take the occasional break.
Many people believe that you shouldn’t take breaks if you are trying to focus on something, but breaks are important if you are figuring out how to stay focused on a task.
A break could mean:
Going for a walk
Meditating
Exercising
Talking to someone
The key to taking a successful break is to be realistic with your time.
Obviously, taking 10 breaks in one hour may not be too helpful. Instead, you need to be realistic with your breaks because if you break focus too often from your work, then you could be hurting yourself as well.
Think about your goals.
A big factor in staying focused is to remember why you are wanting to reach your goal. If there is no reason, then it would be very hard to stay motivated.
You should envision what your life will be like once you reach your goal, why you are trying so hard to reach it, and so on. A little daydreaming can go a long way every now and then.
If your goal is debt payoff, then your reason is probably so that you can stop living a stressful paycheck to paycheck life. Just think what a debt free life would be like! This will help you better understand the ways to stay focused so that you can keep working hard.
Organize your life.
Being unorganized can waste a significant amount of your time and can lead a person to lose focus, pay late fees, stress, lose items, and more.
Whatever you are trying to focus on, organization is key.
Just think about it: If you need something but cannot find it, you will most likely lose focus on whatever it is that you were doing. This makes it more difficult to become focused or to stay concentrated on a task because your mind will be all over the place.
Being organized is a big part of knowing how to stay focused because it helps you stay on task and finish whatever it is that you were trying to do.
Here are some surprising statistics about being unorganized:
The average person spends 12 days per year looking for things they can’t find.
Every day the average office worker spends 1.5 hours looking for things.
In a recent survey, 55% of consumers stated they would save anywhere from 16 to 60 minutes a day if they were organized.
23% of people pay bills late and have to pay late fees because they are unable to find their bills.
Downsize and declutter.
As you learned above, staying organized can help you keep your concentration and focus. To go along with that, you should also think about downsizing and decluttering.
Downsizing and getting rid of some of your stuff can keep you focused because you’ll have less stuff and items cluttering your mind.
By having less stuff, you won’t have to spend as much time cleaning, repairing and maintaining items, and so on. This will allow you to better focus on the things that you truly want to achieve, such as paying off your debt, starting a business, and so on.
Have a to-do list.
If there is something coming up that I know I will not remember, I will create a reminder and add it to my to-do list. This makes managing my life easier because I don’t have to worry about forgetting things, missing payments, etc.
This also connects to the importance of staying organized when learning how to stay focused.
I create reminders for things such as:
Business tasks and to-do lists.
Appointments.
When it’s time to pay estimated quarterly tax payments.
Renewing license plate tags for our cars.
Paying semiannual bills, such as car insurance.
This all makes sure I know exactly what I need to do. Nothing is ever forgotten, and I don’t even spend time wondering if I forgot something. This gives me more time to stay focused on what truly matters.
Outsource certain tasks.
When understanding how to stayed focused on reaching your goals, you may find that outsourcing certain tasks will give you more time and energy to reach those goals.
This may mean doing something such as hiring someone to mow your lawn, clean your house, or do car repairs. This will give you more time to start your business on the side or whatever your goal might be.
In order to outsource effectively and to make sure that it is worth it to outsource, you will want to think about a few things, such as:
Could you earn more in that time by outsourcing or would you be better off doing the work yourself?
Do you feel comfortable doing the task or would you be better off leaving it to an expert?
Would outsourcing the task help you to better focus on your goal?
Spend less time on social media.
The average person spends many, many hours on social media each week.
Between Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and many others it can be quite easy to waste your entire day.
If you find that you are spending too much time on social media and that it is negatively impacting you, you may want to shut down the social media accounts that you are spending too much time on. You can even create a time block so you cannot access your accounts during certain periods of the day, and so on.
By spending less time on social media, you won’t have as many time wasting distractions that make figuring out how to stay focused so difficult.
Just think about what you could do with a few extra hours a day if you stopped spending as much time on social media!
Related: Why I’m Taking A Social Media Break
Watch less TV and stay concentrated.
I love a good TV show, but I can honestly say that I watch too much TV. The average person watches TV for over 35 hours a week!
Can you imagine what you could do by reclaiming just half of those hours each week?
By watching less TV, you’ll have more time to focus on your goals.
Just like social media, think about what you could do with a few extra hours a day if you stopped watching TV!
Have less clothing options.
The average successful person has a very limited set of clothing options, as this way they have more time to focus on things that truly matter.
By finding items that already match one another and having a smaller wardrobe, you’ll have more time to focus on other more important things.
Make your goal visual.
When learning how to stay focused, one of the best ways is to make your goal visual.
Having your goal displayed in front of you can make it that much more real, plus it’s nice to have a constant reminder of what you’re working towards.
Various ways to make your goal visual include:
Create a graphic that demonstrates your goal. An example of this would be if your goal is to pay off your house. You could have a picture of a house sectioned into 100 pieces. Then, each time you reach a small payoff goal, you can color a piece in. I did some research and found a blog post about many other creative ways to do this on A Cultivated Nest.
Keep a picture of your goal on hand. Whether your goal is a vacation, starting a business, an item you want, or something else, having a picture can keep you reminded of it.
Start a blog. Blogging greatly helped me with my goals. I could easily look back to see how I was doing. Plus, I felt like I had to keep myself accountable and keep improving due to the fact that everything was public. If interested, you can start a blog for cheap with my easy tutorial.
Start saying no more often.
If you say yes to everything, but you are ready to pull your hair out, then you may want to start saying no.
Limiting the things you are accountable for can teach you how to stay focused on one thing. It can also allow you to have more time to focus on what you truly want by simplifying your life.
Stay motivated.
Even with how much I love saving money, every now and then it becomes easy to get unmotivated and want to SPEND ALL THE MONEY!
I’m sure I’m not alone either.
While many choose to live a frugal life, it’s not always easy. Some have large amounts of debt to pay off, others find it hard to stick to a budget, and more.
Finding financial motivators will help you continue to work hard towards your goal, even when it seems impossible. Without motivation, one might give up on a financial goal quite easily. This is why it’s so important to learn how to stay motivated.
Think before you multi-task.
Some people can multitask successfully, but with the large amount of time it takes to refocus on a new task, many people cannot.
So, if you are constantly switching back and forth, you will have to spend extra time refocusing each time you switch from one task to another.
Think about your strengths and weaknesses to understand whether or not multitasking actually helps you save time. For the most part, single-tasking will allow you to simplify your life and focus better.
Do you know how to stay focused? What tips do you have to share with all of us on how to stay focused?
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