You sit down to work, and within minutes, notifications, emails, and a news feed hijack your attention. It feels like focusing on work is “impossible.”
Sound familiar?
We felt the same way, which is why we wrote this article. In the next 5 minutes, you’ll discover three tools that will help you focus so easily you can compete with meditating monks in the Himalayas.
Keep reading.
Everything Wants Your Eyeballs
As an experiment, see how many apps you have open on your phone. Count how many tabs are open in your browser. I bet there are multiple things clawing for your attention. Everything is trying to get your focus, and that’s bad.
Take a professional carpenter, for example. It doesn’t matter what he is making; all of his attention and focus go into that project. By doing that, he creates a masterpiece.
Laser focus is how we get masterpieces done.
You won’t create masterpieces by scrolling Instagram every 15 minutes, getting interrupted 75 times, having 50 tabs open, and working on multiple projects at once.
Focus, Commitment & Sheer Will
Research shows that focusing on one thing at a time is real. To achieve massive productivity, we must enter a flow state of work.
A flow state is when you have 100% focus on your task. Everything around you disappears, and the only thing you see is your screen, and the only thing you hear is your thoughts.
Achieving this will improve your productivity by multiples. We’re talking about things like 3x more productivity.
But understand, our brains aren’t switches.You can’t suddenly turn on focus mode for one task and then switch it off. You must transition smoothly from one thing to another.
For this, you must practice “task-switching,” which is covered in this article. Once you know how to switch between tasks easily, you can start working towards laser focus.
Here are 3 Tools to Improve Your Productivity
1.Listen to Binaural Beats Before Work
Binaural beats are sound waves in alternating frequencies. Simply put, it sounds like someone ringing an eternal gong in your ears.
Like you’re sitting next to Buddha himself, learning what suffering means (like urgent tasks on a Friday evening and how to finish them fast).
Listen to 40 Hz binaural beats for 5 minutes before you start working. Studies have proven this improves focus. If you think you’ll get distracted while working, you can listen to them for hours.
But 5 minutes before work is all you need.
2.The 90/15 Rule
You can’t focus indefinitely. We’re humans, not machines. The ideal focus duration is about 90 minutes. The 90/15 rule is simple.
Every morning, prioritize your tasks and make a to-do list.Astravue can help you easily get it done; try it here.
Using the to-do list, create calendar blocks of 90 minutes each, with 15-minute breaks in between. Get all your work done in a block. Then get up, go for a walk, get some coffee—whatever works for you. Then move on to the next block.
We use 90 minutes because of “Ultradian Cycles.” These cycles drive all of the body’s functions, including our brains, which can focus well if trained. You can train your brain to focus better.
We covered that in our task-switching article, available here.
3.Don’t Remember Stuff. Make a List
Our brains are terrible at remembering things. This is why we have calendars, notebooks, computers, and to-do lists.If you keep 50 tasks in your mind, you create an eternal, never-ending prison.
You’re always stressed, with a thousand things to do and no idea where to start.When you try to work, you suddenly remember something else important. Imagine a simple list.
Have a task? Add it to the list. Done? Remove it.
Stuck? Look at the list.
See what’s to do now, what’s coming next, and what’s urgent. All you have to do is click the button below, make your list, and get to work.
