5 radical habits you can adopt to stay focused at work

Ask yourself priming questions

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Take a few minutes to plan out the key areas of focus for your day. If this can be done the night before, even better. This helps to prime the mind. Answer questions like:

What is the most important item in my schedule?
What is that my priority?
What specifically is my goal and what will success look like when I have achieved it?

For a little extra drive, write down a few sentences about what you will gain by achieving your goal or what will it cost you if you don’t.

Writing things down is a simple yet powerful way to record anything and everything that has your attention. Once you write everything down, you’ll notice a sense of relief, as if a weight were lifted off your shoulders. Even if you haven’t done anything on your list just yet, there is a short period of transformation in which your brain goes from chaos to the first stages of order.

Do a focus sprint

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Before you start focus sprinting., you must turn off all outside distractions and focus on a single task - no social media, no multitasking, and no snack runs. Just 100 percent pure focus on the task at hand. I also put on my noise-cancelling headphones, and turn on music without lyrics. My personal favourite is a Spotify playlist called Flow Triggers.

What are focus sprints?

We all understand what sprinting is: Short but intense bursts of energy that are meant to bring out the full extent of your body’s capability. Focus sprints make use of those same intense energy bursts to help you overcome procrastination, channel your concentration, and get things done.

Typically, the human brain works best by focusing on a task in 90-minute intervals followed by 20-minute periods of rest. Pushing past this 90-minute mark can result in decreased focus. That’s why focus sprinting is so effective. It takes advantage of your brain’s natural rhythms to capitalise on the times you are at your peak performance.

The two keys to focus sprints are maintaining your focus and managing your rhythm. Before you start a series of sprints, set specific goals for each chunk of time. Whether you want to break one project up into smaller chunks or you want to tackle a different project for every sprint, establish expectations ahead of time and write them down.

Now that you have your goals laid out, set your timer. You don’t necessarily need each sprint to be 90 minutes; it all depends on your personal rhythm. If you work better in 30-minute intervals with 5-minute breaks, go for it! It is important to start paying attention to your natural productivity cycles and adapt to them.

Create more stress

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This might sound counterproductive but creating more stress can actually help focus. Of course, it has to be the right kind of stress. Short, intentional bursts of acute stress can be really effective in reducing chronic stress and this helps break the pattern of thinking that can facilitate worry and anxiety which often stops you concentrating on the task at hand.
Examples of the right kind of stress are a short, intense workout. Just ten to fifteen minutes is fine. Jumping into cold water or taking a 15 sec cold shower is also effective although obviously a little harder to implement if you’re working from an office!

Take time to recover

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Taking time to recover is key for focus. Taking a walk, listening to music or reading are all great activities to try. If you’re sitting at your desk for hours on end. Try the 20 – 20 – 20 method. Every 20 mins look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds.

Incorporate mindfulness into your routine

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Just 10- 20 minutes a day of mindfulness or mediation is enough to condition our mind’s ability to stay focused. Recognising that I’m an enthusiast and a practitioner and by no means an expert, here are my ways of increasing mindfulness:

Extreme uni-tasking
Getting out in nature – this down-regulates and soothes the nervous system
Living mindfully with daily tasks like eating and listening to music
Journaling
Breathing exercises
Meditation

My meditation practice

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I incorporate a 20-minute daily mediation practice into my routine. Bearing in mind that you’re quite literally doing nothing, it surely must be worth the effort, or lack of!

Here’s how to do it: 



Sit comfortably with an upright posture. 
Close your eyes, take a few initial deep breaths, in through the nose and long and steady out of the mouth. 
Feel the points of contact between you and the chair or floor. Focus on the sensations of sitting.
-Gradually become aware of the process of breathing.
Pay attention to where you feel the breath most clearly. Either in the nostrils or in the rising and falling of the abdomen. 
Don’t try and breathe in a particular way, just notice it.
-Every time your mind wanders in thought, gently bring it back to the sensation of breathing.
-As you focus on your breath you may notice that other perceptions and sensations continue to appear– sounds, feelings in the body, and emotions. 
Simply notice them in your field of awareness and then return to the sensation of your breathing.
The moment you realise that you have been lost in thought, notice the present thought itself as an object to focus on. Then return your focus to your breath.
Continue in this way as you witness how sights, sounds, emotions, sensations, and even thoughts rise and pass away. 



By incorporating these hacks into your routine, you should see a significant improvement in your focus and success at work. So, get out a pen and begin priming for tomorrow. 

Jim Steele is a business speaker, leadership facilitator, executive coach and author of new book Unashamedly Superhuman: Harness Your Inner Power and Achieve Your Greatest Professional and Personal Goals, published by Capstone.