Are you often picking up your phone as soon as you feel you’re losing focus at work? You are not alone! Many of us are scrolling different social media accounts or are doing some spontaneous online shopping even though we have a lot to do at work. Others completely forget to take breaks, and just pulls through all day long. But what is a good balance? And how to pause in the best way to regain focus? We share our three tips to enable you to performance at maximal level all day.
1. Delete social media from your phone
It can be really difficult to break a habit of scrolling unintentionally on your phone. One way to step away from this behaviour is to delete the social apps your use during the work day that are stealing your focus. You can also hide the apps inside a folder on your phone, to remove easy access. If you really cannot live without your apps, you can set a time limit for usage during the work day. A challenge could be maximum 5 minutes per app per day.
2. Take a walk
Around the block is enough. A pause during the day is imperative to performance at your best, whatever tasks you have in front of you. We can focus 45 minutes maximum, before we need a break to regain energy. A short walk enables you to look at your task with a clearer sight once back at work again. In addition, physical activity gives your brain more power. Bring a colleague, but make sure to talk about something else than work and focus on something that allows your brain to take a breather.
3. Limit your notifications
It’s very common to feel stressed when we see a full inbox with unread emails and at the same receive tons of notifications from Slack, calendar, text messages, social media during the day. To constantly be on top of all your channels is unreasonable to ask of yourself, and it’s stealing your focus from work. It takes around 20 minutes for the brain to get back to full focus after having being interrupted by a notification. Make sure to turn off the notifications you don’t need and set up certain slots during the day to check email. This way you create good routines for your work day and you increase your chances of keeping focus all day long.
