Finding Focus: How to boost focus?

Today I want to spend my day researching and understanding focus. This includes enhancing our focus on what is essential in life. By doing this, we can develop healthy habits that drive us towards goals in our life that are our own. Not the goals that are expected of us. Or the goals that are bestowed on us by the powers above.

We are simply focusing on the self and bringing focus to ourselves and what we truly want. Hopefully, by drilling down into the research conducted in “focus,” we can resettle our understanding of the world and how we can best use our time on this earth without being influenced by external factors.

Upon researching this area, it is clear that the art of focused attention has many different aspects. To be truly focused on the present and the “job at hand,” we must master many other areas of our lives to gain “true focus” in a world that seems to get louder by the day. What I initially considered a short topic found me broaching upon many aspects of human life that require their own articles entirely.

There are three clear barriers to focus physical, environmental, and stimulus factors. In other words, your physical/mental condition, working environment, and interest in the task or project.

For this reason, this article will act as one of several pillar posts on this site. An article that stems into many different areas of self-improvement and one that cannot be pigeonholed into a simple word such as “focus.”

Approach to Improving Focus

It is essential to focus on what is important to refocus our lives. While writing this article, I wanted to look at this problem like I do with all issues I face.

Define the goal – First, it is essential to understand the purpose of your actions in the form of a goal. In the case of this article, “I wanted to increase my level of focus on different areas of my life. Ensuring that I provide enough focused attention to those areas I have neglected in the pursuit of a business”.
Define the problem – by defining the problem, you can understand what you need to focus your efforts on to achieve the goal specified. In my case, “I started writing this article to define the problem and provide solutions to increasing my focus on what matters.”
Understand how to overcome the problem – In this stage, you research methods to overcome the problem and review each one critically before moving to the next step. For me, this means “research methods to improve focus and test them within my life. From this, I will provide a critical review of each and write my findings on this site. After the testing phase, I will implement them if they benefit me and others.”
Put the understanding into well-defined actions to overcome the defined problem – at this stage in the review process, you must put the knowledge into practice. Doing so will reap the benefits of the methods and include these methods as part of your daily routines. To implement this into my life, I will “test each focus method and implement those that work into my daily life. This will overcome the problem of focused attention.”
Reflect – An essential part of any cyclical process, reviewing your findings and lessons learned is always important. This will provide personal growth, a critical area that requires focus. The action of reflection will improve your level of content and ensure you continue to grow as an individual. I will implement such action with this website. By reflecting on the methods, “I can learn and grow as part of this process. This will implement healthy habits into my life and provide recounts that may aid people on their journeys.”

In this article, I will follow these steps and provide an action plan to move myself to a state of focus. Please follow along; hopefully, you can implement some of these ideas in your own life.

Defining The Goal – What is focus?

According to the Psychology Dictionary, focus is the “concentration and centering of our attention on a single stimulus.” This definition is extended further by Cogni Fit, which defines focused attention as “the brain’s ability to concentrate its attention on a target stimulus for any period of time.”

Define The Problem – Why is focused attention important?

Within our highly complex and ever-evolving local and global environments, distractions are all around us. This has only become embellished by our ever-increasing reliance on smartphones and social networks for our daily dopamine hits.

Why does that critical thing that we know will bring us closer to our goal when it is much easier to get lost in some form of media online that gives us instant gratification?

By allowing these supercomputers into our lives, we find countless distractions from the present. We have all invited an alarm into our lives that goes off whenever we find ourselves in that level of deep focus that is essential for progress.

Without focused attention, we essentially stagnate, doing everything other than the tasks we were meant to focus on. This goes further when we need to pay more attention to other areas of life that are essential to our happiness by focusing more on these areas.

These areas include growth, health, people, and our environment. Within these areas, different subcategories help you live a well-rounded life. You find “a gap” that needs to be filled by not providing enough focused attention to these areas.

In another post, I will delve deeper into the different aspects of life and how we can build these foundational pillars to boost productivity and content in our present.

Define the Problem – What causes us to lose focus?

Three main factors influence our ability to provide focused attention that can impact us in many different areas of our life. These include:

Personal Factors: These factors include our overall mental and physical well-being. Areas that impact our focus include our overall energy levels, motivation, emotional state, and overall health.
Environmental Factors: We are heavily influenced by the environment we find ourselves in. It is much harder to provide focused attention to something if environmental distractions surround us. These can include people, technology, sounds, and visual stimuli.
Stimulus Factors: This refers to how simulating the point of focus is. If these environmental factors are more stimulating than the point of focused attention, you will naturally choose the task that provides the greater stimulus. The focus task’s complexity, duration, and novelty impact your motivation level.

Understand Ways to Overcome the Problem – Methods to maintain focus

Now that we know the causes of lost focus, we can look at methods to improve these areas to gain greater focus on those areas of our life that matter. This section will provide our findings on overcoming the causal factors that avert our focus.

Personal Factors

How to increase energy levels?

With methods to boost energy levels, it is essential to gain information from credited sources. For this reason, the ways I want to implement into life need to be from accredited bodies that can provide information backed by research. The methods below have come from such research:

NHS – Fighting Tiredness

This article outlines nine methods to boost energy levels. These include:

Regular Meals – Eat healthy meals spread 3 to 4 hours apart throughout the day. According to Health Line sources, skipping meals can be linked to fatigue, anxiety, and poor attention.
Exercise – Regular exercise to boost your energy levels by implementing a fitness routine.
Reduce High Body Fat – Lose weight to boost energy levels if you have a high body fat percentage.
Sleeping Routine – Going to bed and waking up at the same time and ensuring that you get enough sleep while avoiding naps.
Reducing Stress Levels – increase the number of relaxing activities throughout your day. This could include yoga, tai chi, or listening to music.
Therapy – evidence has shown that talking therapies might boost fatigue caused by anxiety, low mood, and stress.
Reduce Caffeine – the Royal College of Psychiatrists recommends cutting out caffeine if you feel tired for three weeks (I drink way too much caffeine, that is for sure). Health Line extends this further by stating to avoid caffeinated drinks after 2 pm.
Reduce Alcohol – the NHS recommends you do not consume over 14 units a week (6 pints or ten small wines). As alcohol impacts how deeply we sleep, this will have a knock-on effect on the rest of your day’s energy levels.
Drink More Water – to boost energy levels, they recommend drinking eight glasses of water a day (far less than I currently drink).

After finding all these methods to boost energy levels, why stop there? The likes of Harvard Health and Health Line extend these methods.

Quit Smoking – if you are a regular smoker, then quitting can have many benefits, including boosted energy levels.
Eat a Nutritious Diet – reducing high-sugar processed foods can boost energy, and it is essential to avoid severe dietary restrictions that can limit your iron levels that impact energy levels.

How to boost motivation?

Upon researching several sources on boosting motivation, they all had the same underlying message. Firstly, you must define an achievable goal, preferably a SMART goal. Once you have determined the SMART goal, create a plan to integrate this new goal into your life. This plan needs to be broken down into smaller work packages so that each task can be completed one by one – taking a large complex project into easy bite-size tasks.

Health Direct adds to this by providing information on how to stay motivated and gain inspiration from outside sources. This includes regularly reviewing your goals and setting new weekly, monthly and annual goals. Ensuring that you continue pushing through your goals is critical for success. According to them, most people take about two months to develop a new habit – for some; this can take longer.

By applying the following methods to your daily life, you can become motivated for the future and your SMART goals:

Set Goals & Continue to Create New Goals: Set weekly, monthly, and annual goals.
Create a Routine: Incorporate your goals into your everyday routine.
Positive Self-Talk: Ensure that you are saying “I can” rather than “I cannot.”
Review Your Goals: You need to ensure that you have regular reviews of your goals and celebrate critical milestones within your projects.
Two-Month Hump: to ingrain a habit into your life takes at least two months. Keep at it for at least this long to ensure you cannot live without the new routine.
Inspire Others or Get Inspired: you can ensure your motivation is high by getting inspiration from other people who have reached your goals. You can inspire others through content creation surrounding your project.
Action Over Words: visualization can be a powerful tool. However, getting consumed and stuck in your future visions can also have the opposite effect. Inaction will not lead you any closer to your goals. Define the goal and problem, find the knowledge, create the plan, and act.
Take a Break: if all else fails, you may suffer from burnout on the project and need a well-needed break. I felt this over the last few months and needed time to reengage and adjust my goals.

How to improve your emotional state?

According to the NHS, there are five pillars of mental well-being and improving your emotional state. These include:

Forming Quality Connections with People

Connecting with others is key to improving your emotional state, thus boosting your focus. The connections we form with others help us build a sense of belonging and provide us with positive experiences and a shoulder to cry on when we are not feeling ourselves.

The following methods are provided to aid in developing these critical connections:

Arrange a time for your family every day.
Plan a day out with your friends.
Play interactive games with your loved ones in exchange for forms of media like the television.
Eat your lunch with others.
Visit a friend or family member that needs support.
Start volunteering to give something back to your local (or even global) community.
Keep in contact with long-distance relations through technology – but avoid using social media alone to build relationships.

Learn New Skills

This one is self-explanatory. By developing new skills, you are tapping into your need and desire for growth as an individual. Learning a new skill can provide many different benefits, including a boost in self-confidence, building a sense of purpose, and boosting another crucial area of your life, connections with others.

These new skills can be in the form of DIY projects, cooking skills, new hobbies, and even pursuing a new academic course. I plan to focus on improving my cooking skills and starting a new hobby to develop new connections. This is a method that I am looking forward to implementing, and I will be sure to share my results.

Give to Others

In the art of giving, research has shown that giving can provide a sense of reward and purpose while boosting connections with this world and other people. To bring these practices into your life, the NHS suggests the following actions:

Saying Thank You – this small act of kindness daily can boost your mood and that of those that you meet.
Asking friends how they are – this will not only build your relationship with those nearest to you, but by genuinely listening, you are focused and present now.
Offer to help someone in need – this could be an act of kindness to a stranger or someone you know in your community that needs help on a project.
Volunteering – You give your skills to a greater cause while gaining connections you may never have had in your social circles.
Giving to Charity – donating can give you a sense of purpose and belonging within a community. By giving to local charities, you know that you are helping a cause that is much bigger than yourself.

Practice Mindfulness

By focusing the mind on the present moment, you will be more at peace and able to focus on the task at hand. The state of calm that comes from Mindfulness is a journey. This is an area that I want to explore in-depth, and I will indeed show my findings and journey toward Mindfulness.

How to Improve Physical Health?

According to the National Institute of Health, there are six strategies to boost your physical health. Some of these methods fall under the previous section of increasing energy levels. For this reason, I will only touch upon these methods and expand on new research.

Method 1 – Get active – through exercise, as mentioned in the boosting energy levels section.

Method 2 – Increase Muscle Mass –maintaining or increasing muscle mass is crucial for your health. Experts recommend two or more activities targeting the major muscle groups weekly for adults.

Method 3 – Eat a Nutritional Diet – as outlined in the boosting energy section, this depends on your fitness goals. Whether your fitness goal is to maintain, gain or lose weight, hitting your macro and micronutrient requirements is essential to ensure you remain at your peak condition.

Method 4 – Kick the bad habits – as outlined in the boosting energy section, quitting smoking while reducing caffeine and alcohol can boost your physical health.

Method 5 – Establish Healthy Habits – exercising and dieting should not be a chore. By implementing these two essential elements of well-being into your daily routines, you will find it strange to go without them.

Method 6 – Find Your Healthy Weight and Check Your Metabolism – it is crucial to find your sweet spot. You may be an endo, ecto, or mesomorph. All these different body types require different regimes to achieve your fitness goals. Age also significantly determines your metabolism (the number of calories you need to burn to sustain your current activity level). Find your measurements and go from there.

Environmental Factors

The Entrepreneur identifies seven methods to reduce external distractions to gain focused attention.

Distraction-Free Mode – by placing yourself in an environment conducive to being productive, you already have a leg up on the rest. By removing distractions from your current point of focus, you will free up your mind to focus on what is essential.

For example, after finding this article, I will implement changes in my work-from-home environment. My current setup is on the sofa in front of the TV. This never used to be the case before I moved house. The plan was to get my office up and running as soon as possible. Shockingly I lost focus on this goal.

This will change, and the office will be finished. Not only will this provide separation between my work and free time, but it will also reduce the distractions in my environment (including the TV).

Set Three Daily Objectives – Limiting the number of daily goals you have will boost your productivity and focus on these tasks. This is a problem area for me. I often bite off more than I can chew. Implementing this method into my routine will reduce my overwhelm when I see the work piling up.

Reduce the Time Frame – we must understand the well-known Parkinson’s Law “work tends to expand to fill the time we have available for its completion.” Through this knowledge, we can reduce the task times, removing any contingency we may have intentionally or unintentionally included. This will ensure that we remain on task, not falling foul of distractions without having time-sensitive tasks.

The article’s other areas explore mental well-being, which we have already discussed. However, I want to expand on this list as there are several habits that I want to include to shut out external distractions.

Listen to Background Music – I have always found that using headphones with relaxing background noise (study, deep focus, and rain music work best for me) helps me focus on the task. By ensuring that you have blocked out all external stimuli, you are more centered on the moment and project sitting in front of you.

Use Digital Wellbeing Apps – if you are like me, or most people in our modern world, you probably work at a computer during some or all of your day. So how do you stop the endless emails, notifications, and news from hitting your laptop and phone? Using digital well-being apps, you can block your access and stop receiving some or all this information from your devices. I have started to set mine during working, sleeping, and relaxing hours.

Stimulus Factors

In this section, we will explore how to boost your productivity and focus on a task that is either complex, has a long duration, lacks novelty, or combines all three.

How to stay focused on a complex problem?

Many articles covered the topic of solving complex problems. Many of these provided the same regurgitated information providing little value above and beyond the obvious. After looking around different documents, several resources provided value, including:

Divide and Conquer: With all complex problems, it is important to divide the problem into smaller bite-sized work packages. Doing this can take a highly complicated project into manageable steps to reach the end goal. By reducing the project’s complexity, you can overcome this barrier to reduced focus.
Find a Mentor or Advisor: By finding an expert in the field of your defined project, you can learn from their experience. You can bounce ideas off them and find inspiration in their journey. It is essential to find someone outside your immediate social circles who will provide you with a non-bias opinion on your current reality and the steps you need to overcome problems in front of you. This external aid can support you during times of distraction and allow you to refocus on your purpose of starting the project in the first place.
Focus on Those Activities that Provide the Most Return: There is a difference between being productive and just busy. Anyone can keep themselves busy. Keeping busy is a waste of time if it does not provide any value to your defined goals. Take stock of how you use the time within your day. Understand where you spend most of your time. What value does this provide? If the value is limited, you have two choices.
Refocus your time on those activities that provide the most value toward achieving your goal.
Outsource these activities to others, allowing you to focus on what matters.

How to stay focused on a long project?

After researching this question, most results and books on the topic provided the same advice covered in the above sections. In my opinion, all of the items covered in this article will improve overall focus – but the topics covered do not directly address the motivation element and the maintenance of long-term dedication and focus on a single issue or project.

After brainstorming a few ideas, I thought the secret lies in reinforcement theory. We must ensure that we continue to provide ourselves with regular rewards that influence our behaviors to continue to drive forward with the project. We have already covered the importance of constructing critical milestones in any project. At these crucial stages, we must gain a positive outcome to push on (unless we have the willpower of a god – if so, well done). A few examples of positive reinforcement at these stages could be:

Self-Praise: This may sound strange but verbal praise to others is not the only praise you can practice. This fast and straightforward technique gives you reassurance and acknowledgment that you have achieved something to celebrate. Keeping your mindset upbeat and making a mental note of your achievement is enough to motivate you forward.
Food: Food as a positive reinforcement method is excellent for food lovers (me included). This method could mean you set a target and go to that fancy restaurant once you achieve it. This will drive you to reach that fitness, professional, or life goal.
Money: This method works great for anyone. By holding off on that next big purchase till you reach a project goal, you will be sure to drive forward to the next milestone. If you are self-employed, this is even better as you can give yourself a bonus for the achievement you have hit.
Free Time: You could use positive reinforcement in the form of free time. This is great if you have had to work long hours on a project. By taking time off, you might find that you return re-energized and longing to get back to work on that project that you once loved to work on.

How to introduce novelty into projects?

The Project Management Institute outlines the importance of novelty in projects to ensure that teams and individuals remain engaged. Engagement with a project directly impacts the result of the human effort.

We must ensure that we approach projects with an element of learning and growth to ensure we are engaged. By pulling lessons out of the mundane tasks that accompany projects, we can remain focused and on task. In doing so, not only will we reach results faster, but we will continue to find the purpose in every step of the journey. Focusing on the process rather than the result.

It has been suggested that you should reflect on these lessons learned and areas of growth. This can be done in the form of a project or personal journal. You can do this daily when you are unfocused or hit a key milestone in the project.

Method into Action – How to focus on what matters?

By combining the knowledge of causal factors and applying them to the twelve areas of life, we can use the above methods to enhance our focus. Reviewing the twelve areas of life can define where you spend most of your time. This exercise provides an overview of your life, and you may need to dedicate more time to different areas of your life.

Once you understand where your time is spent, you can refocus your efforts on areas of your life that provide you with inspiration, growth, and joy in the present moment. By applying the methods outlined above, you can stop blurring the lines between areas of your life. You can build a lifestyle spent on those areas that bring you joy. You can ensure that you focus on what is essential and dedicate more time to these areas.

The goal of doing this is to provide your full attention to the most critical areas of your life for “hyper-focused” periods of time. Free from distraction. We are truly living in the moment.

Reflection – Moving Forward

From this understanding, I will continue testing the methods outlined above and provide reviews and accounts of my experiences with each method. This will give the following benefits to my life and hopefully others’ lives:

Reflection = Growth – The site will provide me with an outlet to reflect on my growth and improvement in focus.
Aid the Wider Community = People – This site will provide an account of my experiences (that I hope) will benefit and inspire their growth, focus, and self-care.
Boost Emotional Health = Health – By writing about methods that (will hopefully improve my life) I will boost my overall well-being. The site will also act as an outlet for my thoughts, ideals, and journey through life.

Over time, the methods in this article will link to my testing and the benefits I have received from each method. As a result, the goal is to improve my focus and boost my overall experience by living my life to the fullest. I hope you enjoyed the first instalment and will move forward with me on this journey.

This is sure to be a long journey, especially with the amount of information that has surfaced from what seemed like a simple question “how to improve focus.”

References

5 steps to mental wellbeing (no date) NHS choices. NHS. Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/self-help/guides-tools-and-activities/five-steps-to-mental-wellbeing/ (Accessed: December 19, 2022).

Accenture (2021) 5 tips for complex problem solving: Accenture insights, accenture.com. Accenture. Available at: https://www.accenture.com/nl-en/blogs/insights/what-can-the-brain-teach-us-about-complex-problem-solving (Accessed: December 22, 2022).

Brockhoff, K. (2006). On the novelty dimension in project management. Project Management Journal, 37(3), 26–36.

Drew, C. (2022) 21 positive reinforcement examples that work!, Helpful Professor. Available at: https://helpfulprofessor.com/positive-reinforcement-examples/#:~:text=Positive%20Reinforcement%20Examples%201%201.%20Verbal%20Praise%202,8%208.%20Subtle%20Displays%20of%20Approval%20More%20items (Accessed: December 22, 2022).

Mitchell, A. (2022) The 12 areas of life balance, The Design Coach. The Design Coach. Available at: https://www.thedesigncoach.com.au/post/the-12-areas-of-life-balance (Accessed: December 19, 2022).

N., S.M.S. et al. (2013) What is focus? definition of focus (psychology dictionary), Psychology Dictionary. Available at: https://psychologydictionary.org/focus/ (Accessed: December 19, 2022).

Patel, D. (2018) 7 proven strategies for overcoming distractions, Entrepreneur. Entrepreneur. Available at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/7-proven-strategies-for-overcoming-distractions/324560 (Accessed: December 19, 2022).