How To Exercise And Develop Your "Focus Muscles" To Get The Job Done?

The ability to focus is one of the most important forces you have in order to get a certain job done.

If you cannot focus, and get sidetracked all the time, nothing gets done and you know it.

Your focus can grow with use. That's why if we multitask we lose the ability to focus on certain activities.

The same principle applies if we allow ourselves to get distracted or interrupted all the time; the brain simply shuts down.

Your productivity is directly related to the ability to focus on tasks over longer period of time.

However, often we can't focus for more than 90 minutes; eventually, we'll get overwhelmed and tired.

In other words, our ability to focus does not only weaken with lack of use, but also has limits when it is used.

The maximum length of our attention span is usually 90 minutes.

If your "focus muscles" are not trained, meaning, you are not getting used to focus for a long period of time, at best you are going to perform within the range of 30-60 minutes.

The brain is designed in a way where it cannot sustain the attention threshold for that long, and the ability to focus drops with use, because our attention requires energy.

The more we use our focus, the more energy is consumed.

That's why breaks and renewal are critical in order to "recharge" our focus muscles and use them again in the future.

It is the same principle with fitness. When you exercise, you get tired. You can't exercise for hours and day without breaks.

However, as you push yourself beyond your limits, your muscles are going to grow with use, and when that happens the attention span is going to increase, but in general 90 minutes is the maximum a person can do.

If you try to stay focused for more than 90 minutes, you'll burn a lot of fuel from your reserves of energy, which can lead to a productive energy crisis along the way.

How to develop deep and clean focus?

So here's how to develop deep and clean focus so that you can get a significant amount of work in a shorter period of time:

1. Focus on one thing at a time until it is complete.

Now, since our attention span is very limited, we might not finish or complete a task within those 90 minutes, especially if it is a big one.

In this case, after 90 minutes, or whatever you attention span happens to be. You may want to stop working on that task for a while (even if it is not completed yet), and then take a break.

When you take a break, you are re-setting and recharging your attention span, thus you can get back to that task you were focusing on previously, and finish it off.

It is very important not to do any other activities after the break, but to work only on that task until it is complete.

You always have to train yourself to complete a single task at a time. If you get engaged in it, after the break come back right away to it.

Why?

That's because if the task is not complete, it is meaningless, it is not going to give you any value, and the time involved previously working on that task is going to be wasted.

If we jump from one task to another, without completing any of them, we are getting nothing done.

So here's what I want you to do:

Some people obviously have a lesser attention span than others.

You want to measure your attention span, and set a task that needs to be done into a particular "focus zone."

By "focus zone," I mean the entire block of time that it takes to focus on a single task at a time without distractions.

The "focus zone" is where you are 100% engaged, and this particular zone is where you do the most of the work. Everything else that's beyond the "focus zone," is either a distraction or procrastination.

Now, in order to measure your attention span.

Get a timer and try to work on a single task and see when you are going to get NATURALLY distracted. I am not talking about external distractions, but internal ones.

If you feel like you can do more than 90 minutes, do not even try, because you are going to be burning your energy reserves pretty quickly.

If your attention span happens to be 15 minutes, every time you work, set the timer to beep after those 15 minutes, and immediately take a break after that, completely disconnect from your work.

If you find the timer distracting, because you were focused and engaged into that activity, simply increase the time frame from 15 minutes to 20 next time, or maybe 25 minutes, but no more than 90 minutes.

When you think it terms of "focus zones," it is going to help you establish them and work on productive blocks of time.

When you work uninterruptedly over a long period of time, you are going to get A LOT MORE done, than if you are just stopping and starting certain tasks and activities all day long.

Most people go and start checking emails, haven't finished reading the email, and they browse through social media, because they got reminded of something, then come back to the email and finish reading it partially, then they get hungry, go to the kitchen, make a sandwich and come back finishing off the email.

This is what you do not want to do. Read the entire email, see what's all about, or what value you can take from it and go to the next thing.

Take a break if necessary, but never do tasks or activities simultaneously, because this is going to damage your thinking, and you'll be running in circles - I guarantee.

2. Wear blinders

If you have been to a horse race, you'll notice that all horses are wearing blinders to keep them focused on the road, without getting distracted by other horses.

Well, you may want to apply this principle when it comes to focusing on a single task at a time.

You need to use "blinders" that will keep you focused until your attention span is exhausted or until the task is completed.

Well, you cannot really wear those things around your head, and I am not trying to compare you to a horse, as some people might get a little concerned and find this comparison offensive, but simply I want you to position the blinders as a mind tool.

You can use it at will; if by chance you get distracted; ask yourself if that distraction is going to have the best use of your time. If not, completely ignore it, as it never existed, or simply do not put any energy to it.

If the distraction is persisting, you do not want to even pay attention to it, and simply you'll begin to adapt to the "noise" this distraction is causing, thus eliminating its effect on your nervous system.

When we are exposed to something like a noise or music, if we accept it as given, not resisting it or pushing it away, you are eventually going to adapt it as part of the environment around you.

In psychology, this is called, "sensory adaptation." You simply adapt to the distractions around you, and they stop bothering you as go along.

Guess what?

This sensory adaptation is the analogy of those blinders so that when the distractions come, trying to steal your attention span, you are simply not allowing it to do so.

3. Avoid shiny objects

Shiny objects in the marketplace today - like the next magic bullet or the next new formula that SELLS is not going to get you anywhere.

Simply, because as you focus on the shiny thing, you are distracted by it, and all your current work or project is completely neglected.

So when you work on a single task at a time, you want to make sure that this task is consistent with your current project, and you want to make sure that task serves your potential outcome you are expecting to get out of your project.

If not, you better stop, and divert yourself from all shiny objects in the marketplace, because they are going to steal your attention, and you'll get nothing done.