Stay Focused on the Present

When you’re in business, there are many different parts to it. There’s the startup, the continuation and striving toward the achievement of both short and long-term goals. Along the way, something will inevitably go wrong.

But focusing on what goes wrong in your business isn’t helpful. You don’t want your mind to be filled with the negative because that can create fear that something else might go wrong.

You don’t want to waste time worrying about the future. You don’t have the power to predict might happen. This is where many people get hung up. They worry about the past or the future.

At the core of this worry is the fear that they won’t be successful. You can’t change the past and you can’t alter a future that hasn’t even happened yet. So worrying about it is a huge waste of time.

Instead of giving your energy to that, work on whatever you’re doing now. Keep your focus on the goals and tasks at hand that are currently important to your business. Choose your present focus.

That means not allowing your mind to waste time on frivolous thoughts. If your thoughts veer toward any “what if” situations, that’s a frivolous thought. Getting stuck in “what if” land can derail any entrepreneur because the road out of there leads straight to worry and can paralyze your efforts.

You have to be proactive when it comes to your focus. Make every minute you have count for today. Choose what to think about or work on in regards to the things that matter for your business in the present.

Don’t focus on what needs to happen with the business in the days ahead. If you keep your focus on the present, you’ll find that you’re making every minute count. Don’t allow situations to occur that might steal your focus.

This might be something like hearing a rumor or seeing an article that your particular niche isn’t bringing in the kind of income you’ve hoped it would. Unless it’s already happened, things like that are just a prediction, not a guarantee - so you’re better off continuing to move forward rather than getting caught up and losing your focus.

Once you lose your focus, it can be easy to lose your momentum and you don’t want that to happen. A good way to stay focused on the present is to make sure you have a list of objectives or goals to accomplish for each day.

Concentrate on meeting those objectives and don’t let your attention wander to something else. Another way to stay focused on the present is to pay attention to the tasks at hand that are going to make money for your business today.

5 Fixes For The Scatterbrain

Do you remember where you put your keys? How about that thing you went into the kitchen to get—do you remember what that was?

If you’re having one of those days (or weeks!), know that you’re not alone. Millions of people suffer from scatterbrain syndrome. It’s when you have a bajillion things to do. You’re running here and there, trying to get everything done. But your brain just doesn’t want to cooperate. It keeps wandering off to random thoughts and irrelevant ideas.

Today, we’re trying to teach our brains to focus. So, we rounded up the best five scatter brain fixes recommended by medical experts. Do them each day and you're guaranteed an increase in productivity. Soon, you’ll be marking things off your to-do list like the focused, driven person you are.

Let’s not waste any time and start learning how you can boost your attention span and concentration.

1.Make Lists

Ask any successful entrepreneur, and they’ll tell you one of the best techniques they use to eliminate scatterbrain is making lists. When you write down everything you’re supposed to get done for that day, it helps you look at things more objectively.

You can shift things around, re-calibrate, and come up with a solid to-do list for your day.

There are two ways to make a list. You can use a good old-fashioned pen and paper. Or you can use technology so you can have your list on you at all times. There are plenty of excellent note-taking apps on both Android and the Apple store.

Here’s how to write up a perfect to-do list:

•Set your timer for 10 minutes.
•Write down all the things you have to get done during the day.
•When the timer goes off, stop writing and take a look at your list.
•Start putting things into categories and give each item a due date.
•Start with the highest priority and get to work.

2.Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is when you focus on your breathing and your thoughts. This form of meditation has been gaining popularity in recent years due to its many benefits.
One of its most profound benefits is that it improves memory and focus. The best part? All you need is just five minutes out of your day.

You can practice mindfulness with your eyes closed and welcome any thoughts that enter your mind. Another way is to do it with your eyes open. This way, you can really hone in on the things around you by using all of your senses.

It could be the way a table is designed, the faint hum of a coffee machine, the way the chair feels beneath your hand. The point is to use these few minutes to be present in the moment. Take notice of the little things that don’t ordinarily register with you as you’re going about your day.

If you’ve never tried mindfulness meditation before, here’s a quick rundown of how it’s done:

•Find a quiet spot with minimal distractions.
•Sit on a comfortable chair with your feet flat on the floor and your back straight.
•Take a few seconds to focus on your breathing.
•If you choose to close your eyes, allow your thoughts to wander.
•If you open your eyes, use your senses to take in every detail of your surroundings.

3.Exercise Regularly

Increased focus and regular exercise go hand-in-hand. So, if you want to fix your scatterbrain, lift weights, swim, jog—the list is endless.

Pick a physical activity you enjoy doing and go for it!
The best part is if you’re not in the mood for a high-intensity workout, you can just go for a walk. Better yet, you can try any of the 7-minute workouts prepared by training experts. They’re packed with all the benefits of a long workout but in a shorter time frame.

According to Dr. John Ratey, author of “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain,” exercise is like a miracle drug for the brain. It increases focus for up to three hours after your workout!
Additionally, it boosts blood flow and enhances neuron growth. These not only make you concentrate better, but they also ward off cognitive decline, dementia, and Alzheimer’s.

4.Stay Organized

While some people claim they find order in chaos, researchers claim that the opposite is true. Studies show that when your desk is cluttered, your brain’s ability to process information declines. Rather than focusing on work, your brain is distracted by the mountains of clutter around you.

Learning how to keep your desk organized takes practice. First, start with a blank desk.

Then, think of an efficient layout. This layout should allow you to get the most work done, while still maintaining a sense of order and harmony.

Once you’ve gotten into the habit of having things neat and organized, you’ll notice your scatterbrain tendencies have become less.

Not only will your brain focus better, but having an organized desk brings inner calm. In turn, inner calm means less stress; reduced stress leads to better focus.

5.Take Breaks

Sometimes, a wandering mind doesn’t mean you’re a hopeless scatterbrain. It just means your cognitive functions are tired and need to rest for a while.
The longer you ignore the message, the harder it’ll be to get anything done. Consequently, the more time you’ll waste doing nothing.

So, the next time you can’t concentrate on the task you’re supposed to be doing, take a break. Go for a walk, text a friend, watch a cute cat video.

Just make sure it’s not anything work-related. This way, after 10 or 15 minutes, you’ll get back to work feeling recharged and ready to focus.
One technique that’s proved promising is the Pomodoro Technique. It’s where you work for 25 minutes straight, then take a five-minute break.

Make Sure You’re Challenging Yourself Enough

If you find yourself getting easily distracted with work, it could be because you haven’t trained your brain to focus enough. It could be that you’ve developed the habit of daydreaming.

While either of these could be the case, there’s also the possibility that your work is simply too easy for you. For example, an artist could find a certain project too easy and it doesn’t inspire him.

This would lead to the artist to feeling bored and unenthusiastic about the prospect of working on that project. Like artists, all humans need to be challenged in order to grow and to have enthusiasm or motivation to work on something.

When you’re not challenged enough, you’re going to grow bored with your life and job. Not having a challenge in your business life can leave you feeling unfulfilled and restless.

When this happens, you’ll have trouble focusing on your work and getting your projects done. You might even find that you just don’t care. If you find your work is too easy, you can become distracted because you might feel that it’s a project you can do with your eyes closed.

You might feel like it’s mind numbing work. If that sounds like you, then it’s time to start challenging yourself. One of the best ways to do this is to get out of your comfort zone.

If you feel stuck in an office job that just comes too easily to you, maybe try doing something in the creative field like photography.

You can also begin striving to become an expert at an area of your field you find the most interesting. If you work in IT, you could challenge yourself by learning to make websites from scratch or work in a different area of IT.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you have a lot of different things to choose from if you want to challenge yourself. One great way is to begin teaching others. If you’re good at your job and feel that it’s become mundane to you, try teaching others how to do the same kind of work that you do.

It will give you a renewed sense of purpose as well as open up a new challenge. Another great choice is to experiment doing things differently. Find new ways to do the same job.

Try to focus on reaching what you may have previously thought of as an impossible goal. Impossible goals are the ones that you may have always wanted to achieve but you thought just wasn’t in your future because you didn’t have the knowledge or the equipment or whatever.

Challenge yourself to do it anyway and work around any obstacles. When you feel like you have an impossible goal, you’ll find yourself pushing harder to achieve it. Challenge yourself to finish your projects faster but with the same quality.

Challenge yourself to take on opportunities that you never imagined you’d go after. Not only does this beat boredom but it also builds self-confidence.

Small Things That Can Disrupt Your Focus

Having your focus disrupted can interfere with your creative process as well as make you lose productivity. While you might immediately think about all the big things that can do this, such as people interrupting you or your phone ringing, more often than not, it’s the small things that end up stealing your focus.

If you’re trying to work in a room that’s too cold, this can be a culprit because your body is forced to use more energy to keep you warm. If you feel chilled or reach the point of shivering, it means your body is using energy.

In order to focus more, keep the room where you’re working a comfortable temperature. Noise can be a problem for some people. You might hear other people talking, the noise of kids at play if you work from home or dozens of other sounds and this might bother you.

While there are people who can’t stand to have noise when they’re working, silence can be a distraction as well. You need to figure out which sound it is that helps you to focus.

You might have to choose a few options to see which sounds work best for you if silence is a distraction.

One of these is a coffeehouse background noise. This is the quiet sound of dozens of conversations taking place in the background. You can often hear trays being set down, silverware clinking and soft laughter.

This kind of noise deals with silence but at the same time remains in the background so it doesn’t disrupt your creative flow. Some people use white noise. White noise is the same continual sound at a specific intensity level.

What this frequency does is it hides the other sounds that would disturb you. The brain tunes in to the white noise sound and blocks other disruptive noises. Video game music is another option.

This kind of music raises your focus because it stimulates the brain. If you listen to a recording that features several different kinds of video game music, it also works to prevent sound boredom.

The lighting in the room you’re working in needs to be right. Otherwise, it can cause eye strain. You want to make sure that the lighting you use doesn’t make you drowsy. For example, fluorescent lights can bother your circadian rhythm and make you sleepy during the day.

What you eat or drink can have an impact on your focus too. Foods and beverages that are high in calorie or salt content can make you feel drowsy and give you brain fog. Too much salt interferes with the amount of blood flow the brain receives, and steals focus.

If you want to boost creativity and focus, think about your décor. It’s a fact that certain colors have been known to help with both. Green is known to boost concentration. The color red stimulates the mind. Yellow is known to boost creativity and blue is known to help with alertness.

Use Brain Training Exercises to Increase Your Focus

Many people don’t realize that one of the most important parts of your body that needs strength-training is your brain. Just like how you strengthen your arms by lifting weights, you have to do the same with your brain.

If you don’t, you can end up having poor focus and concentration. This can make your mind wander consistently throughout the day, and the end result is that you suddenly realize you haven’t accomplished everything you needed to do.

Several studies have been conducted to prove that brain training exercises and games can increase your focus and strengthen your cognitive functions. These cognitive functions in the brain are what allow you to receive, store, develop, and remember information.

Without strengthening these functions, you can have trouble focusing and concentrating because your information feels scattered rather than organized. One study in Saudi Arabia followed fifty-one healthy subjects for months while they used brain training exercises.

At the end of the study, it was found that several of the test subjects showed improvement in their cognitive functions, especially with their attention span. This means the people who used brain training exercises were able to keep attention and focus on things longer than before they’d practiced the exercises.

One of the most important things you need to train your brain to do is focus. It’s natural to daydream when you’re in an office or doing repetitive work. But you can train your brain to make focusing a habit as well.

When you don’t train your brain to focus on your work, then you can end up with the problem of not getting your to-do lists finished which means you could miss work deadlines.

Some people who don’t train their brains with exercises might have a problem with procrastination. There are several brain training exercises you can use to increase your focus so that this isn’t an issue for you.

However, remember to start at a low level. Just like how you wouldn’t start exercising by bench-pressing three hundred pounds or running five miles, you have to stretch your brain first before it can start focusing properly.

A great thing about brain training techniques is that you can do them anywhere. For example, there are several apps, including the highly popular Luminosity, that allows you to do brain training exercises and games on the go.

By training your brain every day, you’re building it up to handle more. This will help in all areas of life, but especially with work and creativity. When you have a busy day ahead, it can be difficult to remember everything that needs to be done.

But if your mind is already prepared from brain training exercises, you’ll find it easier to remember the tasks you need to get done, and by improving your focus, you’ll boost your productivity.

Don’t Use Your Work Space for Other Things

There’s a reason that the IRS says if you have a home office it should be used solely for that purpose and nothing else. It’s because using a home office for multiple purposes can lead to a crossover between professional and personal use.

If you have a workspace, you should be working. Mixing up the space can happen anywhere that you’ve set aside to work. It happens when you let boundaries slide. But it really is best just to use it for the intended purpose and not for any other reason that people commonly choose to do.

For example, some people choose to eat at their desk or whatever their workspace is. This is a bad idea - not just for health reasons, but it’s also bad for productive purposes. You get less done physically and mentally.

When you mix work with eating or any other habit, it blurs the lines between what’s work and what isn’t. You can easily make the mistake of setting yourself up to think that it’s okay to work and it’s okay to not work when you’re in your space.

At your desk, your purpose should be to focus and to be productive to work on whatever task or project is before you. But when you choose to eat or to do something else instead, it steals that focus and productivity.

This happens because the brain is straddling two functions when you do that. You need to have boundaries between personal tasks and professional ones. Otherwise, your brain remains in the work mode and doesn’t relax and get a break from the work.

This can lead to overwhelm, which in turn can lead to brain fog. On the other hand, if you’re constantly using the space for other things in addition to work, the brain won’t want to get into work mode.

It’s important to establish what your workspace is for and what it’s not for. Your space isn’t supposed to be a spot to hang out and watch TV. It’s not meant to be the area where you play with your pets or your kids.

It’s not supposed to be the place where you play games or wonder what you’re going to have to eat for dinner. When you treat your workspace like any other space, you lose the benefit of conditioning the mind to fall into the habit of work recognition.

You can establish the work habit to create a routine in the mind. As soon as you sit down in your chair, your brain automatically kicks into thinking, “It’s time to work now,” but if you use the space for other purposes, it won’t do that for you. Save the relaxing activities and tasks not related to work for other spaces. You’ll get more done.

5 Tips For Reducing Distractions

Today's world is complex and intricate, socially intertwined and packed with information overloaded. The mind is working overtime and it can be incredibly difficult to block it all out and focus. Unfortunately, jobs are becoming more and more specialized, requiring that very focus we don't have. So how can we survive in the world and get things done? How do we train our brains to absorb everything around us but still remain focused on the task at hand? Here are 5 tips for reducing distractions and help improve focus and concentration in your daily life:

1. Follow your mind: While you can't always give into your mind, sometimes you have to realize that you need to rest and take some time to do what you enjoy. It's crucial that you can differentiate between when you truly need to take a break and when your brain is just being a painful distractor!

2. Periodical revision: This is the other important principle of superb focus and concentration in hypnosis. Hypnosis considers the technique of periodic review as the best thing that a man can enjoy to increase his focus and concentration. When you learn something, the periodical update of that thing is necessary to retain that information in your mind.

3. List out your goals or ambitions in a plain white paper. Write down what you want to become and the ways through which you can achieve that goals. List out what you cherish to become in big, bold and clear handwriting. This way, you can look at it and force yourself back to your task.

4. Remove your distractors: It's no surprise that you find yourself texting and calling your friends when your phone is right infront of you, buzzing away. If you really want to accomplish your goals then sometimes you have to completely remove the distractors from your life. Put your phone into another room. Block Facebook. Delete your Twitter account. Put your goals first!

5. Hypnosis enables you to reduce distraction. It provides us with the right tools to reinforce our focus and concentration. People often complain about the things in their life that they find difficult to concentrate and focus upon. This happens when you focus more on what you don't want rather than what you want. The factors that affect your ability to focus and concentration are stress, poor diet, anxiety, lack of sleep, etc. the problem of lack of focus and concentration is very embarrassing and frustrating. It can cause you lose your confidence and self-belief. The factors that can help you develop a sharp and sound memory for the perfect focus and concentration are your attention, intention and your interest in that subject.

How To Improve Your Focus

Whether you are a sportsperson, actor, student or a working professional, your performance is determined by your ability to focus properly. However, there are times times when our mind wanders away and it becomes impossible for us to concentrate on anything.. Hence, by following some simple tips, we can ensure that we always manage to stay sharp and focused.


1. MEDITATION: It will be great for your body and mind if you can manage to allocate at least half an hour everyday for meditation . But, that is not possible for everyone. Fortunately, that doesn't matter, because even when we are breathing we can practice meditation. Breath is the main source of our energy and by simply becoming aware of your breath, you can slip into meditation. That best part about this is that, you can do this anywhere and anytime.

2. KEEP YOUR GOALS SMALL AND ACHIEVABLE: It is good to dream big, but sometimes you can get distracted and lose focus. Since the dream is too big, you will fail to realize any immediate results which brings you closer it. It is best to break it into smaller portions and then slowly achieve them one by one.

3. START FASTING A BIT: Everyone knows that eating heavy slows us down and makes us feel lazy and sleepy. Fasting has lots of good benefits. It boots our metabolism process and helps to keep us sharp and focused. However, small amount of fasting is recommended only. Don't starve yourself. 

4. TAKE PART IN PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES: Always try to keep yourself engaged in physical activities. It helps to keep our body in a good shape and also helps us to stay focused. As per a study, 20 minutes of yoga everyday enhances the brain functions and improves our ability to focus.

5. SPEND QUALITY TIME WITH MOTHER NATURE: Sometimes it is better to just sit down and enjoy the small, beautiful things about Nature. The chirping of birds, twigs crackling, the wind blowing through the branches of the trees- just sit down and try to listen to these sounds. You will feel at peace. As a result, your focus will also improve.

6. EXERCISE YOUR MIND: Apart from taking part in physical activities, try to keep your mind engaged in different activities. Solve some puzzles or the crossword, take part in debates and discussions or involve yourself in any creative activities. In short, don't let your mind stay idle. 

7. LISTEN TO MUSIC: Music is a big stress buster and helps us to maintain our focus. However, most people listen to music while reading or exercising. Instead try to listen to the music carefully. Try to listen to the different instruments playing in the background and focus on any one of them. It adds a new dimension to your music listening experience and is also very good for your mind.