Episode 948: Ten Tips to Stay Focused

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 948 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:07] Barry Moline: I'm Barry Moline. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your call. Having the ability to connect with others is key.

[00:00:24] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer,

[00:00:34] Scott Maderer: because what ends up happening often as we get to the end of the day, we look at our lists. We were busy all day long, but we actually didn't get anything. I have days like that still today. And I've been studying this for 30 years. We all have days like that, but the key is to use these sorts of tests. So you have fewer and fewer of those days and more and more days where you get to the end of the day and you look at it.

[00:00:59] Welcome. [00:01:00] And thank you for joining us inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true color. In the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself. Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the work

[00:01:25] in today's episode about developing your influence by stewarding your time. I talk with you about 10 useful tips to improve your phone. I also share why your focus is so important for your productivity. And I share with you how focus can be the difference between success. As we talk about stewarding your time.

[00:01:46] Wouldn't it be great. If you could support this podcast and do it without just taking too long, it turns out you can. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. When you're ready to make a purchase via [00:02:00] Amazon and a small commission will come back to support the show. Just that quick. If you enjoy the show, when you are ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/animals.

[00:02:12] Let's talk a little bit more about focus and this comes up a lot on the podcast when we're talking about time, because I truly don't believe time is something that we manage, but I do think we can manage energy and we can manage focus and we can manage productivity to be able to use our time more effectively.

[00:02:34] So I talk more about those things than I do directly about time, man. What are some things that you can do to actually increase your ability to focus first off, let's talk about what that really is. Staying on task focus is about being able to do the things that you say you're going to do to concentrate on the things that you say you're going to [00:03:00] concentrate on to some extent, regardless of what's happening around you.

[00:03:05] But the truth is that's often a struggle. So the first step, the first tip is to actually assess where you are at assess your mental focus and your ability to focus. Your focus is good. If you find it easy to stay alert, if you set goals and you break up those goals into smaller tasks and you consistently achieve them, if you find yourself able to take a short break and then get right back to work without delay.

[00:03:34] But your focus needs work. If during a work task, you find yourself daydreaming, you find yourself constantly seeing and being pulled in other directions by distractions, and you consistently lose track of where you are and have to back up and reset. Find yourself resonating with that first set of statements, then your focus is probably pretty good, but if you find yourself resonating with the second, then you [00:04:00] probably need to work on your focus.

[00:04:03] The second tip. And the thing that is really important is your first step, always to increasing your focus is to minimize distraction. Often we think about that in terms of sound, but it can be other things as well. It can be your cell phone, it can be Facebook, it could be other people, all of these things can create interruptions and distractions that pull your focus away.

[00:04:29] And so you need to first evaluate what is distracting you and then find ways to reduce or eliminate that during times when you're trying to focus. And let's talk about the third one. Limiting your focus. The truth is that it often feels like the best way to make progress is to multitask, to do several things at one time.

[00:04:50] But all of the studies show that you are much less effective when you multitask, you get less done. So instead [00:05:00] find a way to concentrate on one thing at a time. Don't get your. Bouncing around to doing different things instead, look at one task, complete it, and then move on to the next one technique that you can use to do that.

[00:05:20] For here is using Pomodoros. I've talked about this before on the show using these focus blocks of 25 minutes of work, then a five minute break and then repeat. And once you've done four rounds, take a longer break of 15 to 30 minutes. This technique is one way of helping yourself focus in on one task at a time.

[00:05:42] And number five, you can put a break or a lock on social media, do it on your phone, do it on the apps on the computer block. Those sites of those distractions are harder to go to. Number six, and this is about self care. You need to take care of your diet. You need to actually eat and you need to [00:06:00] eat well, not just sugary snacks, but eat things that actually help balance your energy out throughout the day.

[00:06:06] Things like complex Kartra carbohydrates or lean proteins and these sorts of things. And similarly, number seven, you need to get enough sleep. You need to actually make sure that you're getting all of the sleep that your body needs. And let's talk about the types of goals that you're setting. Number eight is making sure that you're setting tasks that are small, manageable, and specific smart goal type task, that you're breaking things down into the levels that you can actually get done so that you're able to focus on them without suddenly getting to a task that says something like rewrite my entire website, and it's so big that it stalls you out and you end up easily going in other directions and not getting it.

[00:06:52] Number nine, you can work on your mindfulness. You can actually do activities like meditation [00:07:00] and other activities to work on focusing and paying attention to what's going on inside yourself. And then number 10. You can actually learn to make a good to do list and by good to do list, I mean what I was just talking about with smart goals.

[00:07:15] You learn to break tasks down and put them on your to-do list in small chunks that you can actually get done instead of just massive areas. And you also can use that to do list as a way of capturing tasks that pop up at your brain and would distract you so that you don't forget them, but you can actually get them done.

[00:07:35] And I'll give you a bonus tip as well. You can batch your tasks so that you can focus on similar task at similar times that also helps your focus and your effectiveness. This is important for your productivity because the truth is what keeps us from getting enough done and getting the right things done tends to be that multi-tasking distracted way that we [00:08:00] do work.

[00:08:01] The truth is when you do studies and people that focus are always able to get not just more done, but they're able to get things done in a more effective way. It's a better way of doing it and focusing on a task or not focusing is often the difference between success. And failure. It's the difference between actually getting things done on your list, checking them off, making sure that you're actually getting, not just more things done, but the right things done, because what ends up happening often as we get to the end of the day, we look at our lists.

[00:08:36] We were busy all day long, but we actually didn't get anything done. I have days like that still today. And I've been studying this for 30 years. We all have days like that, but the key is to use these sorts of techniques. So you have fewer and fewer of those days and more and more days where you get to the end of the day and you look at it and you say, I got done.

[00:08:58] Not only [00:09:00] everything I wanted to get done, but those things were actually the most important task for me to do. Thanks for listening.

[00:09:09] Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your call. If you liked this episode on the stewardship of time, be sure to sign up for our stewardship of time tips series by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting 4 4, 2, 2, 2 time tips, and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time until next time.

[00:09:54] Invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and [00:10:00] impact the world. .