Your willpower works like a muscle and so does your mind. A muscle needs exercise to be stronger. What you need to do in order to learn how to focus and do it effortlessly, is to train yourself to become more disciplined. In order to improve your willpower, you will need exactly what a muscle needs to grow— resistance.

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How To Stay Focused

Some tips on how to train staying focused at work and your daily life.

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Focus is an important skill to master these days. Don’t underestimate its power.

Mindvalley

Do creative work first. Typically, we do mindless work first and build up to the toughest tasks. That drains your energy and lowers your focus. "An hour into doing your work, you've got a lot less capacity than (at the beginning)," Rock says. "Every decision we make tires the brain."

Nadia Goodman

We are truly focused for an average of only six hours per week. You want to be really diligent with what you put into those hours.

David Rock

Notice where and when you focus best, then allocate your toughest tasks for those moments.

Nadia Goodman

Practice concentration by turning off all distractions and committing your attention to a single task. Start small, maybe five minutes per day, and work up to larger chunks of time. If you find your mind wandering, just return to the task at hand.

Nadia Goodman

When multitasking is the norm, your brain quickly adapts. You lose the ability to focus as distraction becomes a habit.

Nadia Goodman

Any meaningful task or routine takes a large part of one’s focus. Before starting anything, ask yourself why you should do it. With your answer, there will be that output you so desire — and so you value the task. Don’t stick within borders of “approved” output; have your options opened for new, fun ideas.

Nadia Goodman

Don’t lose precious time and be distracted with discomfort. Get a really good chair with great back support; make sure your desk or worktable is well-structured as well. That way you can work for many hours and not find your body and eyes getting strained.

Nadia Goodman

Drinking water isn’t only healthy, it refreshes you as well. Once you feel the first sign of fatigue or hunger, a glass of water can push them away. Then you can finish what you’re doing and rest at a later time. Besides, not all stomach rumblings are signs of hunger and drinking a glass of water usually deals with it.

Nadia Goodman

Stay away from social networking sites. Not only will it defeat your purpose of staying focused at work, but there’s plenty of information there that could get your mind unnecessarily perturbed — like a friend’s status about her heartbreak, or someone from work getting a raise.

Nadia Goodman

Pinpoint the problem. What causes you to lose focus? Is it fatigue, hunger or a Twitter addition? Figuring out the issue is the first step toward trying to fix it.

Laura Schwecherl

Plan ahead. Envision what the workday will look like before it happens. Write down what things need to get done or what you want to accomplish. Setting goals can help people stay on track.

Laura Schwecherl

Meditate. Scientists have discovered that meditation may enhance certain brain functions linked to attention. It can’t hurt to try shutting everything off to get more done in the long run.

Laura Schwecherl

Meditation is about mindfulness. This is supposed to be how we live all the time. However, we usually keep ourselves busy with unimportant things and struggle with choosing what to focus on. This brings chaos to the mind. By meditating, however, you become one with the present moment.

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Work offline. One survey found nearly 60% of disruptions at work come from email, social networks and cell phones. So for tasks that don’t involve the Internet, try using old-fashioned paper and pen — perfect for brainstorming! Put your phone on silent and limit time on social media too.

Laura Schwecherl

Reward yourself. A little motivation can go a long way. Say, “After I finish this page, I’ll go buy a cookie!” Watch that to-do list vanish in no time.

Laura Schwecherl

Take little breaks. Getting to the office early, working through lunch and staying late doesn’t necessarily mean getting more stuff done. Short bursts of hard work followed by quick breaks can be more beneficial than never taking a breather, since the brain may just burn out.

Laura Schwecherl

To perform better at work, learn new skills, be more productive, make decisions, study smarter, and make progress in basically anything that involves your brain, it’s advisable to work on how to focus better.

Mindvalley

Your attention is your biggest asset, so it’s important to keep it where it’s supposed to be — on the task at hand that is getting you one step closer to achieving your goals and dreams.

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Identify any distraction in your surroundings; then, remove it.mThe point is to not just learn how to focus, but also how to stay focused. And for that to happen, all distractions need to be eliminated. Let’s begin by identifying distractions.In order to make room for focus, you must first remove distractions.

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Improving your willpower can help you learn how to focus better because you have more control over your mind— you will soon begin doing anything you should just by telling yourself to do it.

Mindvalley

True focus happens when you’re only doing only one thing at a time and investing all your attention in it. It is actually another form of meditation— it’s what can get you in ‘the zone’ when you work. Doing more than one thing at a time is the biggest distraction of them all— and you’re the one choosing to do it.

Mindvalley

Train your brain to stay focused by catching yourself before you fall into bad habits. Each time you feel yourself being distracted stop as soon as you can. The harder you make it to become distracted, the more your mind will stay focused.

Jory MacKay

To strengthen your focus, find a place that is free from distraction. Whether that’s a different part of the house or a cafe without wifi, the point here is to give your focus a chance to recharge.

Jory MacKay

Our mind is unable to focus on more than one thing at a time, and in fact, ‘multi-tasking’ just means switching from one thing to another very, very quickly. And the more we switch, the more energy we use (And the more energy we use, the less we have to stay focused on what matters).

Jory MacKay

Stress is a focus killer of epic proportions. Which really sucks considering that we’re most likely to be stressed when we need to focus the most. Instead, mindfulness training teaches us to not get swept away by stress or strong emotions by being more aware of what we’re doing and what we’re thinking about.

Jory MacKay

Exercise isn't just good for the body. It promotes brain health, too, which is important for memory capacity and concentration.

John Ratey

In particular, scientists think regular exercise may help stimulate the release of a chemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which some research suggests helps rewire memory circuits to improve their functioning.

Jessica Orwig

One of the main symptoms of chronic sleep loss is poor concentration. Getting a solid seven to eight hours ahead of a busy work day could be the difference between being frazzled and being laser-focused.

Jessica Orwig

In a shooting day in the U.K., every few hours, everyone takes a bit of a tea break - not coffee, but a tea break. They bring out these little finger sandwiches with the crust cut off. Everyone sits around for a few minutes, with their pinkies in the air, drinking. It's so cultured.

Jonathan Silverman

As a kid, 'Star Wars' was much more my thing than 'Star Trek' was.

J. J. Abrams

The work I'm doing on 'Watchmen' is mind bending and physically just hard.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Their diet is basically boiled vegetables, fish and rice. No fat, no sugar. You notice when you live there that there are no fat people.

Arsene Wenger

Theres more honor in investment management than in investment banking.

Charlie Munger

If I complain about a traffic jam, I have no one to blame but myself.

Steve Wynn

A perfume is an intimate object, it is the reflector of the heart.

Emanuel Ungaro

I began like all composers, writing for small groups. Chamber groups.

David Del Tredici

I put more pressure on myself than anybody in this world.

Bryce Harper

Nothing is sadder than having worldly standards without worldly means.

Van Wyck Brooks

Any time you try to be edgy just for the sake of being edgy thats the worst way.

Billy Lawrence

If you only knew how to respect my heart, I wouldn't have found a reason to let you go.

Jourdane Erasquin

'Success' is a seductive word. Thousands of books have been written on the subject. They promise money, freedom, leisure, and luxury.

Joseph B. Wirthlin

I'd always been a science fiction enthusiast.

Ivan Reitman

A lot of people who live in Denmark will understand Danish but not necessarily speak it.

Susanne Bier

If we aren't going to be afraid of conflict, we have to see it as thinking.

Margaret Heffernan

I completely love music. I used to be the music critic at 'The Improper Bostonian.' It's just something I've always loved very deeply.

Matthew Tobin Anderson

The interesting thing about the miracle berry in chemo patients is that it actually straightens out their taste buds, whereas for you and I, it blocks our bitter and sour receptors. For them, it straightens them out to taste food as it normally tastes.

Homaro Cantu

II know very, very little about the ukulele, but I actually grew up playing the viola from 4th grade through high school.

Kris Allen