How to stay focused

It can be hard to stay concentrated at work if you are constantly being distracted by notifications, colleagues, and movements in your surroundings.

It is tempting to react to all these distractions. This happens almost automatically. Your brain is intrinsically very lazy and, therefore, prefers to work as little as possible for a new dopamine peak (the reason why social media is so addictive).

Of course, you will be satisfied much faster if you answer an email or solve someone's question/problem than when you are toiling for 3 hours focused on a heavy task.

Here are some quick tips from us that will make sure you do resist those dopamine rushes and keep you productive ??.

Do: turn your notifications off ??

The first step is to turn off your notifications. At least start with email, Slack, Google Chat, Microsoft Teams, and Whatsapp. When people really need you soon, they will call. To avoid missing out on important messages, you can schedule regular times to update your messages. Depending on how busy your inbox is on a day, you can plan 2-3 moments to check your messages.

Do: Close or group tabs ??

Not so long ago, one of our colleagues shared a story with the team in which he told that he got easily distracted while working with a lot of tabs open in his web browser. That was because when he browsed through the tabs, he often came across a forgotten task he needed to finish. To avoid this distraction, we recommended him to close all the tabs he didn’t need. Eventually, this really worked for him to keep focused during the day.

So, do you find yourself working with a lot of tabs open, too, and do you get distracted easily? Then maybe this could be a step in the right direction for you.

If you prefer not to close your tabs, you can also choose to group them. You can do this by clicking right on one of your opened tabs. A pop-up list will appear where you will find the option ‘Add Tab to New Group’. If you click on this option, you can choose the name and color of your group. After that, your group will be created, and you can add other tabs to this group by clicking right again on another tab, this time choosing the option ‘Add Tab to Group’.

Eventually, your tabs will look like this:

By clicking on the colored group tab, you can collapse and expand your tab groups. This way, you will not get distracted by the tabs you have added to a collapsed tab group unless you click on this group tab.

One quick tip before you start using these group tabs, though: make sure to keep track of how many tabs you have opened in each group tab. You can easily lose count and have too many opened tabs, which will slow down your computer and make you less productive.

Do: Go with the flow ?

The 'go with the flow' tip refers to the moments during your day when you naturally have a good focus and the moments in your day when you are more easily distracted.

We all would prefer to have a good focus for 8 hours a day, but this is, of course, not realistic. That is why it is important to plan mentally heavy work, or deep work, at times when you can naturally focus better. Mentally lighter or more administrative work, or light work, can be planned at times when you are naturally less productive. In our office, most people prefer to do their deep work in the morning and their light work at the end of the day.

Don’t: get distracted by your surroundings???

Now that you have cleaned up your digital environment by turning off your notifications and closing your tabs, it is also important that you don’t get distracted by your physical environment. One easy tip here is to keep your desk tidy.

Sounds from your physical environment can be distracting as well. That is why we often work with noise-cancelling headphones, so we are no longer bothered by chatting colleagues.