How to Stay Focused and not Get Distracted?

I wonder how many of us are there who were never reminded by their parents, teachers and bosses “Stay focused.” If you are one of them then most probably you are not a man but a superman (or a superwoman). For the rest of us, staying focused is often a problem. We easily get distracted and lose our way in life. By getting distracted, we may make a mess of our life and even bring disasters that should not come.

Why I am writing this?

I am writing this blog post because I feel that I have lost the ability to stay focused. It has become very difficult to focus on anything for one hour. I am going to write about my problem some later. I am writing this blog post basically for 3 reasons:

a.   I want to talk about my problem and thus, I hope to get a clear idea

b.   I want to practice of doing something for one hour at a stretch without getting distracted

c.   I want to find some tips and share them with you

You may wonder that instead of spending nearly 2 hours for writing this blog entry, I could have thought about it.

My problem

Well, that is my biggest problem now. If I had taken two hours to think about the problem then there was a very good chance that within 10 minutes, I would have got distracted and may be started watching TV, ate something or browse aimlessly in Internet. I was always good at doing 2-3 things at the same time from my childhood. I used to eat my dinner, listen to radio and read newspaper at the same time and I was foolishly proud of it.

All my life, I used to excel by focusing on several things at the same time. It is not a bad idea but it helped to destroy my health and as a result, my career suffered. Of course, I suffered from some bad luck and some bad people too but the reality is that I cannot control bad luck or bad people. Now, my health has improved a lot and I want to come back to normal work but my main problem is that I cannot focus at all on anything. If I can just focus on something for a few hours then I guess that 90% of my problems would have gone away.

Your Problem

This entry is not only about my problem but about your problems too. Otherwise, why you should bother to read it! After all, I am not a celebrity singer, actor or even a celebrity writer. If you are reading this post then there is a good chance that you have come here via Google (or any other search engine) while searching something related to ‘being focused’. It is not that your problem must be exactly same like my one. The first thing that I would suggest that you try to get a specific idea about your problem related to getting distracted or about your lack of focus.

How this entry will Help?

I have already told you about my motive behind this entry and I can find that it is helping me because after many days, I am really focusing on something from my heart. How about you? My advice for you is that if you like this post or entry then why not re-read again for 3-4 times. It won’t take a lot of time. After reading it then try to think about the things that have been said here. May be you can find something useful-something that you can apply in your life hopefully. You can also put a comment here and start a conversation with me or other readers that would read this post in future.

Plan First

I am really bad at planning something. It is not that I cannot do it but I just don’t like it. I always used to consider it as a waste of time. I have thought of something and I started jumping to it right away. Now, I regret a lot for this habit of mine. I am happy to say that before writing a single word for this post, I planned about it for nearly 40 minutes. As a result, I know now what I would write here. So, always try to plan before you do anything important in your life. Here the idea is not to plan about everything or spending more time on planning something than doing it. Just thinking about your work for a few minutes won’t kill you.

Take it Slow

Are you fond of speed like me? There is nothing wrong in it. After all, you have just 12-14 hours a day to do so many things in life. However, after suffering so many setbacks in life, my conclusion is that life is indeed like a marathon not a 100 meter sprint. So, if you try to move too fast then you will just burn your energy and get sick. I have realized that I became sick because I always tried to be faster and perhaps a bit too faster than my capacity. When you do something every day then naturally you will get better, faster and more accurate- this is common sense. However, when you want to achieve something in a month that normally should take a year then even if you can achieve that speed there is every possibility that you would suffer.

Small steps not Giant Leaps

I have already stated above that it is tough for me to eve focus on something for 10 minutes. If I now think of targeting to stay focused on something for 8 hours then I would surely fail and I really doubt whether I would achieve it in my lifetime. However, if I target for just 30 minutes or 1 hour then there is a 90% chance that I would achieve it. So, I am going to start with one hour and slowly increase it and then reach to 4 hours. I would like to tell you that you should do the same thing. Just start with something that you really can do. Then try to increase it after a week.

Something You Like

It was nearly 3 years ago, my health became so bad that I lost the ability to work like a normal person. My condition reached to its worst in 2011. I just simply lost one year. Last year this time (June 2011), my condition became so bad that I lost hope of ever coming back to normal life. It was not my health that was bad but I had to fight with some evil people. I even could not write and I always dreamt to be a writer. I love writing perhaps more than anything else (except my wife of course). When I noticed that I could not write anymore then I lost hope even more.

I started watching the movies and TV shows that I liked. This really started the amazing turn around for me. It did not solve my problems but helped me to feel some better in my mind. As a result, from the beginning of 2012, I could start trying for my health and after 6 months, I feel much stable and normal.

Motivate Yourself

In life, it is natural for all of us to lose our way. However, it is important to bounce back and for this, you need to have some kind of motivation. Try to figure out what inspires you most. Are you a family type of person? Then try to find inspiration from it. If you are fond of success then try to imagine the kind of success if you can focus. Just tell yourself every day that you want to stay focused.

Keep Record

I was not fond of planning and keeping record. However, in the last 6 months, I tried to keep record about my health and weight loss efforts. It has helped me a lot. When you write down something and then check it, you feel more accountable to yourself. It becomes difficult for you to run away with silly excuses.

Evaluate Regularly

Once a week or once a month, spend some time for evaluating your progress. For example, I have decided that from today, I am going to try to focus on something for one hour each day. After 10 days, I want to see how I have done so far. Even if I fail I won’t have regrets. Instead, I will try to find out the reasons behind my failure. When we know about our mistakes and problem then it becomes easier for us to overcome them.

Nobody is Perfect

Now, I really believe that nobody is perfect. You should be satisfied with yourself and try to find out your strengths. Use your strengths for your improvement. I really don’t wish now that I was born as another person. I am happy with myself because I know that nobody is perfect. So, I don’t bother about perfect. I surely want to improve but I don’t want kill myself with the goal of becoming perfect.

Creativity vs Anarchy

For years, I hated making any plan, keeping notes and then evaluating about my mistakes. I used to feel that these things would destroy creativity. Instead of becoming creative, I have become a person full of anarchy. This is not good because while there are that 1% people who can keep a fine line between creativity and anarchy, for most of us, anarchy takes over our heart instead of creativity.

Final words

I have spent nearly 2 hours for this blog post and I am happy to say that I could stay focused. I did not turn on TV for a second; I have not opened a single web page either. I just drank two glasses of water which is by the way very good as I have been sitting here in front of my desktop for the last two hours.

I am happy that I could write this blog post. I feel tempted to spend another 2 hours browsing Internet about this topic and add some examples from real people about this matter. Then this entry would have been rich and very useful. Well, I really would love to do it but then I remembered this important lesson- life is a marathon not a 100 meter race.

Today, I have just started my come back to normal work and it will take time for me get the speed, quality and accuracy. May be, after one hour, I will be able to write a good and useful blog post or magazine article of 2000 words within 3 hours that would be read by 500 persons but today I surely cannot do it. If I try to do that today then I will just ensure that even after one year that will not happen.