FEELING UNPRODUCTIVE? 3 TIPS TO HELP YOU FOCUS BETTER!
Before i begin, i just wanted you guys to know writing this article was really hard for me😂😂. I didn’t know where to begin from and i guess i was having negative mind-talk on whether you guys would actually enjoy reading this or it would join the list of cliche motivation stories on the internet. Irregardless, here i am writing this and you reading it so please stick with me as i give my own unprofessional opinion on how to focus better on your tasks/projects .
Lack of focus is fast becoming a big problem for us humans nowadays, in a world of so many distractions, it’s really easy to find excuses to quit rather than get something done and the funny thing is that there’s always some BS quote, advice or statement to support why we do what we do.
In the short term, it is so satisfying engaging in these delusions but in the long term, we get depressed wondering why nothing in our lives ever work and it might affect our health and productivity as well.
So to become the most productive version of ourselves, I believe these few tips will help in our day to day lives.
1. HAVING THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE
How you perceive your tasks goes a long way in determining your approach to it. If you see your task as an unsurmountable problem, then most chances are that you’ll find a way to escape them and buffer through it. I think i can say from experience that this approach doesn’t work and it will come back to bite you in the butt.
However if you choose to see your problem as a challenge and a medium for growth and learning, the way your mind reacts to it changes. You start brainstorming on how you are going to solve the problem and you start seeing progress. So what you might need to change your life and the way you do things is just to tweak your perspective a little and have the right attitude.
When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. -Paulo Coelho
2. GET DOWN TO THE BASICS
Another major cause of lack of focus in our lives is that we get overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task at hand and we panic causing negative mind chatter that tends to discourage us and make our doubt our abilities. This is absolutely normal and i know for a fact that it has happened even to the best of us.
To overcome this problem, we must simply “break our tasks down”. This means is that we take a big tasks and analyse little steps we can take to achieving this tasks. for example, if you plan to do 100 push ups as a beginner, our minds tends to make us feel doing that is nearly impossible and we tend to quit even before we start, but if we break down 100 push ups into 10sets (10 pushups per set), the odds of achieving that seems much more possible. Even if we don’t get it on the first trial, if we stick with it there’s a higher chance of success.
“To be effective in fulfilling your goals, you must break them down into little tasks and then spend most of your time working on the task in front of you, instead of being overwhelmed by the enormity of the big goal.”
― Sunday Adelaja
My advice is make a to-do list, highlight a certain number of tasks that will get you closer to your goal and more importantly “JUST DO IT”.
3. CELEBRATE YOUR LITTLE WINS
You might find this a bit hard to do at the beginning because those little things you accomplish might seem insignificant when you look at the bigger picture but you have to learn to do it anyway. Celebrating your little wins helps you appreciate your efforts and also motivate you to do more. One of the best ways to do this is to “Create a reward system”.
By providing yourself with little rewards and incentives, you will appreciate your efforts more and feel motivated to do better.
“Happiness is the real sense of fulfilment that comes from hard work.” — Joseph Barbara
THE BOTTOM LINE
A wide range of factors can be the cause of your lack of productivity; lack of sleep, multitasking, procrastination, social media distractions amidst other things and that’s why its important to pay attention to your lifestyle and make the necessary adjustments to become more efficient with your tasks.
This is not a one time thing and it’s not going to be easy so brace yourself and make a daily decision to follow through and you’ll get astonishing results. By applying these few simple tips and tricks, like the ones I described above, it will help you go a long way in keeping track of your most important tasks every day.
THANK YOU FOR READING AND HAVE A PLEASANT DAY!
