An Article about a Natural Approach to Gaining Better Focus
This article was forwarded to me from a friend. It is written by Dr. Rob for MSN Health & Fitness. This advice offers a method for improving your concentration that’s not far different than what I’ve been sharing as an expert in helping people increase performance, productivity and satisfaction by decreasing distractions. To view the original article, links and find out more about the author, please follow this link.
Q: I am having difficulty staying focused on my job. I work at a high school and my environment is not library quiet and is often either too hot or too cold. I have many interruptions and can’t seem to complete a task. Is there something natural to take that helps to stay focused?
A: Sounds like you are working in a very open, spontaneous and interactive environment. Needless to say, it would be hard for anybody to focus on a specific task while dealing with frequent interruptions.
That said, the most natural solution would be to enlist your administrator’s help in relocating to a more worker-friendly area of the office. Or you might rearrange your workday in a manner that schedules in specific times for student visits and phone conversations, plus do-not-disturb times dedicated to completing assigned tasks. Taking a pill, natural or otherwise, would not protect you from a highly distracting workplace environment.
When referring to a person’s ability to focus or concentrate, we imply that their thoughts are narrowly channeled toward what they are:
- Currently doing (playing, watching a movie, working on a job assignment).
- Intending to do (gathering information needed for a presentation).
- Wanting to complete (homework, project, others).
If thoughts, feelings or one’s environment disrupt the ability to complete tasks in a timely or mistake-free manner, there may be a problem with focus or concentration. More often than not, distractions are the main reasons for this concern. These can be grouped into two categories: Internal and External.
Internal distractions are driven by your own thoughts, emotions and physical well-being. For instance, have you ever tried to do homework on an empty stomach or when you were very tired? If so, you know it can be hard to concentrate. Other internal distractions include but aren’t limited to:
- Poor organizational ability.
- Impaired ability to read or understand (eye or hearing problem, dyslexia).
- Worry, anxiety or depression.
- Job dissatisfaction.
- Time of day (too early or too late).
- Medications or supplements (stimulants, fatigue-causing drugs, others).
- And lack of exercise.
Even though attention deficit disorder (with or without hyperactivity) can be a significant cause of internal distraction, I do not think that is contributing to your lack of focus. I say this because you did not mention having ADD/ADHD as a child, nor did you express problems with impulsivity (speaking before thinking, gambling problem, others), distractibility (cannot follow conversations, easily bored, others), or hyperactivity (constant talking, trouble sitting still, others).
External distractions are related to the environment. In regard to your workplace, there are lots of reasons for your inability to fully concentrate. These include:
- Noise.
- Constant interruption (telephone, student needs, co-workers).
- E-mail, inter-office mail, public address system announcements.
- Uncomfortable office air temperatures.
It is important to know that each and every one of us has a different temperament, coping mechanism for working in a busy environment and the ability to maintain focus amid a storm of chaos. We can only do our best while adapting to the situation at hand.
Robert Danoff’s Top 10 strategies for helping you stay focused at work include:
- Prioritize tasks into what is important and urgent. Accomplish these first, then complete others in a timely manner.
- Ask for help. If you are constantly interrupted by phone calls or impromptu student visits, meet with your supervisor in order to provide a more organized structure.
- De-clutter your workspace, leaving only one project to be completed at a time.
- Noise cancellation devices, such as earplugs, may help improve your focus on the task at hand.
- Privacy. See if you can relocate to another area when your assignment requires attention without interruption.
- Temperature control. Ask the maintenance department to provide better regulation of the heating and cooling system in your office.
- Create solutions that will provide for a better work environment.
- Nurture yourself, and provide positive feedback with your accomplishments.
- Stop fighting the tide. Learn to accept and expect interruptions. Instead of getting frustrated, just go with the flow.
- Don’t look too far ahead. Step back, take a deep breath, smile and exhale. Now you’re ready for the task at hand!
Robert Danoff, D.O., M.S., is a family physician and program director of The Family Practice Residency, as well as the combined Family Practice/Emergency Medicine Residency programs at Frankford Hospitals, Jefferson Health System, Philadelphia, Pa. He is the medical correspondent for CN8, The Comcast Network, a regular contributor to Discovery Health Online and a contributing writer to The New York Times Special Features. (Read his full bio.)
© 2008 Microsoft
Stay Focused During Extreme Times
In today’s volatile and uncertain economy fears abound across many industries and professions throughout the US and abroad. People fear losing their job, their home, their financial savings, and their health.
This fear has immobilized many people and caused a sharp decrease in workforce productivity. It is very difficult for people to concentrate on the task-at-hand when they have so many concerns. We are indeed living in challenging times. These are times of uncertainty but life will continue.
Now is the time to focus like never before, to determine what’s really most important to you, and how you can best proceed. It’s a time to take fate into your own hands and be in control of your life. Rather than feeling like a victim, create your paths, secure your future, do what you need to do to help overcome your fears.
Fear is an indication to do something. Doing nothing or ruminating about all the possible scenarios can keep you stuck. There are very few guarantees in life. You may need to take some risks to take control. Determine for yourself the degree of risk you can handle and make choices based on this. Find ways to keep your productivity high as well as the quality of your work so that your self-esteem doesn’t suffer unduly.
These are days of extreme and often irrational pessimism. The way to survive this crisis is to stay focused on the fundamentals. The benefit to you is less stress, more control. The benefit to the economy and to businesses is that productivity and standards don’t suffer.
What’s your fears telling you to do different or do differently??
How to Truly Pay Attention to your Work–Before it Costs you Your Job
The four important keys for managing distractions at work so that you can increase your productivity and performance include:
1. Recognize what, when, why and how distractions occur for you. Realize they may be different for you than for others.
2. Identify everything vying for your time, attention and resources.
3. Select your top priorities.
4. Realign around your priorities and FOCUS!!
What works for you??
Staying focused
On average in our fast-paced society, we switch tasks every 3 minutes, and once distracted can take up to a half an hour to resume the original task. This pace leaves many unfocused and challenged to complete tasks. It can cause you to miss crucial information during a conversation and damage teamwork, work and personal relationships. These distractions effect teamwork, focus and productivity. It’s harder and harder to stay focused on our important tasks at work. Most people struggle throughout the day to stay focused and in the present.
Consider these tips to help stay more focused at work or home:
- Take a breather and allow yourself to zone out for a brief time
- Stretch or take a walk to help get re-focused
- Engage in eye contact when communicating face-to-face
- Turn away from the computer, window, messy desk during conversations
- Use various types of meditation to slow breathing and maintain clarity
- Turn off the electronics and communication devices
- Move to a quiet area to concentrate on a complex task free of interruptions
- Live in the moment and be fully present
- Practice re-engaging and re-focusing often; train your mind to stop drifting
Business or personal coaching can help you develop tools and strategies to gain more focus. The Distraction Diva, Natalie Gahrmann, helps busy professionals increase performance, productivity and satisfaction by decreasing distractions.
Workplace Distractions
Robin Fogel, a fellow Executive and Career Coach, recently published the following in her monthly newsletter and granted me permission to share it here. To learn more about Robin visit, http://www.coachrobinfogel.com/.
Whether it is the workplace or life in general, our modern existence seems to demand that we get more done. Yet while we are being asked to accomplish more, there are also greater distractions. Multitasking was originally praised as one solution, a way to accomplish more, a way that we could be more efficient. Recent scientific findings are now reaching the opposite conclusion; multitasking is not making us more productive, in fact it may be reducing productivity. Now, in a new book by Maggie Jackson, “Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age“, the author writes that constant interruptions have hurt workers’ ability to focus. She says that, “roughly once every three minutes, typical cubicle dwellers set aside whatever they are doing and start something else”. She writes that these constant interruptions consume as much as “28% of the average US worker’s day, including recovery time, and sap productivity to the tune of $650 billion a year“.
While the costs to businesses are enormous there are personal costs as well. A recent study found that those workers who are regularly interrupted expressed greater frustration, and felt greater pressure and stress over their inability to get their work done.
Ms. Jackson wrote that if we “jump on every e-mail or ping; we’ll have trouble pursuing our long term goals”. So, as you read this article, if you are also checking your voicemail, talking to a
co-worker or toggling between websites, remember that it is the ability to focus and complete one task at a time that will increase your productivity and have you feeling less frustrated. And remember to close your office door, if you have one, for some uninterrupted work time. Turn off the email alert beeper on your computer, and make it clear that you are not to be disturbed unless there is a true emergency.
The late Peter Drucker, author of “The Effective Executive”, once wrote, “To be effective, every knowledgeable worker, and especially every executive needs to dispose of time in fairly large chunks…to have small dribs and drabs of time at his disposal will not be sufficient even if the total is an impressive number of hours.”
Women Leaders Getting Better at Juggling
I read an article yesterday that was published in the Miami Herald. It was in the Balancing Act section and was about how top women business leaders are good at juggling. Although I avoid endorsing juggling as a strategy and opt for rebalancing or integrating instead, the key point that I extracted from the article is about women talking more to each other and sharing solutions. Women today are finding more work/life solutions because we’re supporting each other better!
As women climb the career ladder or start their own business, the importance of having a diverse network of supporters both inside and outside of the workplace increases as does their responsibilities at work. Those who have been most successful at achieving an overall life satisfaction have learned to incorporate effective strategies for enhancing performance and productivity.
Even as women are building businesses and advancing on the career ladder, an ever-increasing number are also achieving work/life balance — A whopping 61 percent of women business leaders interviewed for this article claim they are satisfied with the balance between their career and personal life, up from 51 percent in 2006, according to the 2007 survey released by FIU’s Center for Leadership and The Commonwealth Institute.
Talking with other women and learning about potential strategies that work has helped women adapt effective strategies for better balancing their lives. The universal challenge of findingmore work/life balance is easing as more and more women talk honestly and openly about it and determine creative solutions. As women set more realistic expectations, we they are permitting ourselves to have time for our self and to ask for (and accept) help both inside and outside work, when needed.
Women need to stop hiding behind the facade of being perfect and be real instead. There’s so much more we can learn from each other when we’re open and honest!
From one working mom to many others….
Yours truly,
Coach Natalie Gahrmann
natalie@nrgcoaching.com
Gaining Focus
I conducted a presentation today to a group of women leaders at a college. Overall, it went ok but not as I had anticipated. So, when I analyze what went wrong….the bottom line is that I tried to put too much into a 45 minute presentation and ended up losing my usual focus and organization. I spent too much time in some areas and not enough in others.
Overall, the feedback about how I actually conducted the program was excellent because there was lots of information provided, participation and interaction, and effective communication. The problem was that I didn’t get to cover some of the pieces in the depth I had planned. The program felt a little unorganized to me, especially when I started to rush to get through it. I had planned on having the participants complete an activity but there was no time left. I wasn’t told that some of the participants needed to leave by 1:15, fifteen minutes before I was expected to conclude. Although I think I held it together, I felt distracted once people started leaving prior to my completion and wrap-up.
My contact requested that I combine 3 different presentations to cover the pieces she thought would be most beneficial to the audience. In my aim to please, I feel I over-promised. Combining 3 different programs and bringing them together into one 45 minute presentation gave me a challenge. Unfortunately, I am not pleased with my results.
I wonder how many times in life others may have similar circumstances occur in their work or personal life. I know I tend to be hard on myself, as are many of you reading this post. However, I believe there’s much to be learned here about staying focused on the desired outcome and not sacrificing quality. I’m interested in learning and growing from this experience and your experiences. Please contact me at natalie@superbusyparent.com to share.
Yours,
Coach Natalie
