Fix Your Focus with these 6 simple steps

I guarantee you that today at some point during work, you lost focus.

Perhaps it was even this email notification that pulled you out of deep work…

One moment you're on course ready to conquer your to-do list, and the next you're scrolling mindlessly on social media or need to answer yet another 'urgent' email that could have waited.

A sharp focus allows you to cut through the noise and follow the signal.

Focus is what allows you enter deep work, and ultimately move the needle closer to your personal and professional goals.

And we're talking about real growth here, not just the illusion of being busy.

Here are the 6 most impactfull methods I personally took to increase my focus:

1. Identify distractions.

Whether it's your phone buzzing every few minutes or a desktop cluttered with too many open applications, it's crucial to know what's pulling you away from your work.

Becoming aware of is the first step to any meaningul change in your life.

Where your attention goes, energy flows.

The absolute best way to develop a deep level of awareness, not just for identifying distractions, but for life in general is through meditation.

Even if it’s just 5min/day where you focus on your breath and observe your thoughts, meditation will have a profound effect on your ability to focus and consciously choose what you give your time, attention, and energy to.

Another practical recommendation besides meditation would be to grab a piece of paper and pen and put it next to your computer or work area. Then set a timer on your phone for 30min and when the timer rings you’re going to write down the current time and everything you did in those 30min. Then resest the 30min timer and repeat this for the whole day. You’ll be amazed at the results.

2. Cut out distractions.

Now that you’ve identified your distractions you can cut them out. It’s actually quite simple, uninstall all the social media apps on your phone that does not make you money.

Uninstall TikTok
Uninstall Instagram
Uninstall Facebook
Uninstall Snapchat

And once you’ve deleted the biggest time wasters on your phone, turn your phone on airplane mode when you’re working

You can’t get distracted by notifications if you don’t get any. It’s easier to just cut all these distractions off at the source and remove them entirely rather than using willpower and effort to try and stay focused.

And if you want to take it a step further than just airplane mode, throw your phone into another room away from your workstation or put it into a desk drawer. Basically just don’t have it anywhere in your field of vision. Out of sight, out of mind.

3. Decrease dopamine.

Discipline > Dopamine

Dopamine isn’t bad, cheap dopamine is.

If you constantly flood your brain with easy cheap dopamine like social media, video games, porn, sugar, and drugs that doesn’t require any real work or effort to obtain, then you’re training your brain to get used to and dependant on finding the easy way out (cope).

Essentially you become addicted to quick dopamine hits just like a drug addict.

So cut all of these out as soon as possibly.

A quick and easy hack to decrease dopamine is to turn your phone to black and white. It might sound weird but trust me it works.

This lowers the dopamine hit you get from scrolling on social media or time-wasting apps, making you WAY less likely to visit them.

Try it for 7 days, I bet you can’t even last 24h.

4. Prioritize tasks.

Don’t prioritize your schedule, schedule your priorities.

Prioritizing tasks is another cornerstone of focus. After all, not everything that demands your attention deserves it.

But prioritizing your tasks comes after identifying what the tasks needs to be in the first place.

Envision your dream life and reverse engineer the steps you had to take to achieve it. What are the quarterly milestones, the monthly projects, and the daily tasks required for you to achieve your goals?

Add those high-impact tasks on your calendar (no more than 3 per day) and when you boot up your computer in the morning, start with the most difficult task first and don’t eat or touch your phone until all 3 tasks are done.

And make sure it’s work that will actually move you or your business forward, and not just busy work to make you feel good.

5. The Pomodoro technique.

Now for the science.

The Pomodoro technique is based on research that says our brains function best when we work in bursts, balanced with short breaks.

This cycle keeps your mind fresh and maintains your focus for extended periods.

The most used timeframes are 25-minute sessions of work, followed by quick 5-minute breaks.

I personally use and would recommend listening to Brain.fm while working to quickly get yourself into the flow state with their amazing binaural beats and make use of their pomodoro timer.

6. Notion (duh!)

Admit it. You knew I’d mention Notion at some point…

I had to. It’s just too important not to mention.

Notion can be your all-in-one solution: a platform to list and prioritize your daily tasks, set up your new Pomodoro cycles, and even serve as a repository for capturing those 'aha' moments and ideas that often escape us when we need them the most.

A workspace like this is very common in the Notion space, and it’s one that many creators call a “Second Brain”, popularised by Tiago Forte.

Btw - I also recommend you look into Tiago Forte, as he is somewhat of a pioneer in the productivity space.

Having one central Notion hub for all your tasks, projects, meetings, information, ideas, finances, goals, etc. and being able to adapt that dashboard to fit your needs well into the future can have a profound effect on your mental clarity and abillity to focus and be more productive.

I have countless free tutorials on YouTube teaching you the ways of Notion in case you want to learn and build your own system, but if you’re like me and would rather just spend a little bit of money to save you countless hours of trial and error, then make sure you check out my Life OS dashboard.

P.S. In case you just want a quick free template, then be sure to grab my free OKR Goal Tracker.

Thanks for reading, hope this helped in some way!

Talk next week
Chris