A Simple Tip To Maintain Focus

For many students procrastination is a problem, and there are many reasons why we tend to procrastinate. While having to work on various assignments there will always be tasks you like to do and ones you don’t like so much.

Say you’re studying graphic design. Creating new work will be more fun than writing a review on the process of doing the project. So writing the review will be postponed and you will fully focus on the fun part (the creative process). But then, when the deadline is approaching, there is still this daunting task waiting for you at the end of the project. You will not have enough time to do some quality writing and you might have to do it the night before the presentation, leaving a bad feeling about a project that was so much fun at the beginning. Sounds familiar?

A solution for this particular example would be writing a small amount every day or every other day, dividing the task in small easy steps. At the end you would only have to look at the pieces you wrote during the process and write a conclusion. Not so much work at all!

This example focuses on the part of the work you don’t like, but even while working on our favorite part of a project, there are many things that can easily grab our attention and distract us from what we actually want to be doing. The most obvious ones are email, instant messengers, telephone calls, things that immediately take your attention away from the work you are focusing on. But those are things you can avoid, although for some that’s quite a challenge itself. You can switch off your phone, quit your instant messengers and email program or at least turn off the sound so you won’t hear it when a new message arrives at your inbox. I’d say just quit it and open it later when you have some time you can dedicate to answering the incoming messages.

That’s not the tip I mention in the title of this post though. Unwanted thoughts can be just as distracting as your phone ringing. Do you know the situation when you are focusing on something and suddenly there’s a voice in your head: “Don’t forget to buy bread because the bakery will be closed in the weekend”. Or “You really should find out what is the best digital camera to buy before you go on holidays next week”. Or even something related the project itself you have to do research on, call somebody about or buy. Things like that can cross your mind at the strangest moments.

The solution to this ‘problem’ is described by Neil Fiore in The Now Habit and is probably even more simple than you thought:
Always keep a blank piece of paper and a pen next to what you’re doing. Probably you’re working on a computer, so put it next to your keyboard on the desk. As soon as one of those funny, unwelcome but seemingly highly important thoughts appear and start getting in your way, write them down and forget about it again! Make sure you work for a set amount of time on your task without getting distracted. Only after finishing this block of quality work you allow yourself to look at the paper and the things you jotted down. Probably a lot of those things will not feel as important as they felt when you wrote them down. And the ones that are can now easily be reviewed, and taken action upon.
So that’s it, a simple piece of paper. I’d say don’t use software for this, as switching between applications already takes away your focus from what you were doing.

I would like to hear about your thoughts on this. What tool do you use to avoid getting distracted?

Photo by jonbro