Are You Losing Focus While Working From Home?

While sitting in your home office staring at the laptop screen do you find yourself zoning out of online meetings? Reading the same email multiple times yet still not actually understanding a word it says? Spending two hours on a task that should have only taken one? Missing deadlines and falling behind with work because you’re constantly unable to concentrate and get a task finished?

?All of these are signs you’re losing focus.

The good news is that with just a bit of effort you can regain and maintain focus throughout your workday.

Here’s how:

Stop Half-Focusing.

Half-focus is the biggest saboteur of all. Think about how often you find yourself multi-tasking and not paying full attention to either task. That’s half-focusing, and it’s negatively impacting your productivity. Stay focused on one task at a time, no matter how mind-numbingly boring it may be. By giving it your full attention, you’ll get it done and out of the way faster.

If you find yourself really struggling to focus, get up and move around for a few minutes. A change of scenery, even if it’s just moving from one room in your house to another, combined with physical movement helps to clear your mind and can help you reset your focus.

Manage Online Distractions

Every distraction breaks your focus, no matter how small or brief the distraction may be. While it’s impossible to remove all distractions, keeping them to a minimum has a big impact on your workday.

Limit the use of your phone, as it’s easily the biggest culprit for distractions. During your workday turn off anything that isn’t relevant to work and mute all notifications so you can be fully focused on the tasks at hand. If you don’t need it for work, consider turning your phone off completely until you have managed to regain your focus and catch up with your workload.

Try a focus extension for your browser to temporarily block sites that aren’t relevant to your work during office hours. This allows you to set which websites you can and can’t view while you’re working, so if you try to check a social media or shopping page and it’s not on your time approved list, all you’ll see is a blurred-out screen reminding you to get back to work.

Watch For Time-Stealers

It sounds obvious, but just because you’re working from home doesn’t mean it’s time at home.

Time-stealers are nice but unimportant non work activities and distractions that intrude on your working hours stealing focus. Such as - a ‘quick’ extra coffee break, a ‘quick’ chat with a family member, a ‘quick’ text chat with a friend, a ‘quick’ piece of urgent DIY that could actually wait, a ‘quick’ run to the local shop. They all add up and all remove both time and focus from your work activity.

Maybe try closing the door to your workspace, turning off your phone and sharing your work schedule with your family and friends so they know when you’re working and when you’re free.

If it’s something you wouldn’t do if you were in the office, then try not to do it so much when working from home. It is still a workday after all.

Plan Your Day and Give Yourself Deadlines.

For many people having a set deadline for an activity helps focus the mind to that specific task. Working from home it’s easy to lose track of time or to slip into the mindset that you have more time than you actually do, believing you’ll find extra time later. Making the task at hand less important and harder to focus on.

Set solid, realistic and achievable deadlines for completing activities. Schedule your daily tasks properly. Most importantly make sure you stick to your timelines and plans. If you manage to finish a task early, then maybe reward yourself with an extra coffee break or treat.

Schedule Breaks.

The longer your work without a break, the harder it becomes to focus. Your brain needs time to disconnect from work periodically throughout the day.

Be diligent about both scheduling and taking breaks, as simply putting them on your schedule and constantly working through them obviously does not have any benefit. When you find yourself needing to work through a scheduled break, be sure to still take that break as soon as you possibly can.

Listen to Music.

Studies have shown that music helps increase focus.

Chose the right kind of music, there’s no point putting on your headphones and singing along to your favourite tracks or getting lost in music fuelled memories and daydreams.

If you’re easily distracted by the lyrics then chose something instrumental, if you can’t help singing along to your own playlists and albums chose a random playlist or listen to the radio. Most music streaming services even have pre-set playlists available designed to maximize focus and concentration.

Connect your headphones to your computer rather than your phone or listen via a smart speaker, so that when you want to skip a track you aren’t tempted to check your notifications or social media as well.

Try noise cancelling headphones—blocking out the audible distractions around you helps you stay in the work zone.

Stop working so many hours.

Unfortunately, multiple studies have shown that we’re now working more hours at home than we were in the office.

The daily commute to the office meant the workday had a set start and end time, so you weren’t expected to be at your desk until 9:00 a.m. and by 5:00 p.m. you’d be trying to finish up your work for the day so you could leave and go home at 5.30.

When working from home, it’s easier for the workday to stretch both earlier and later. Just because you can continue working doesn’t mean you should.

That lack of a solid end time can actually have a negative impact on your focus. Without a clear end to the workday, there’s less urgency to buckle down and work. Remedy this issue by giving yourself a set start and finish time each day and stick to it.

Take Time for Self Care

Make sure you take time each day to look after yourself mentally and emotionally.

Sometimes stepping away from the task can help. Take a moment to do something fun and not related to work. It could give your mind the break it needs to reset and refocus.

Be aware also that in some situations long-term lack of focus could be a warning sign of a larger issue such as overwork, excessive stress or burnout. If you can’t regain your focus over a long period of time no matter what you try, maybe your body and mind are telling you something is wrong. In this instance it may be healthy to take some time to explore what underlying reason could be causing your lack of focus and mental clarity. Seek professional help if necessary.

Perhaps most importantly, don’t be too hard on yourself

If you have a day or two where no matter how hard you try you just can’t seem to find your focus ??- and we all have those days – try not to let it negatively effect you, take a few more breaks, work as much as you can, and try again tomorrow.

Del Page – 16/03/2023