Use a Routine to Help You Weed Out Distractions

By using a routine, you’re establishing habits. When you have habits, it allows your brain to function on autopilot. That means you’ll do things without really giving it much thought because the action is ingrained within you.

Having a routine is good for you because it works to keep distractions at bay. Plus, if you’re currently finding that you do have distractions, establishing a routine can knock those out of your way.

Most people, even if they work from home, are more productive and better focused when they use a routine for everything they need to do. This begins with choosing the right time for setting the alarm.

Having a routine lets you know what you have to do next without really putting much effort into it. For example, your routine should include a time for when you need to need to take a shower.

Some people have a routine where they do it in the mornings after rising because it helps them to wake up. Others feel they get more done when they get dressed first and have breakfast, so they schedule their shower in the evenings.

You can set a routine for when you eat and this can include all of your meals as well as any snack breaks. You’ll be able to cut out distractions when you have a routine for when you work, so set a schedule for starting as well as for when it’s time to leave work behind.

Some people find it’s better to have a schedule that breaks down each part of their workday, such as some time that’s set aside for creative tasks while other time is set aside for administrative tasks.

Using a routine allows you to weed out distractions that impede productivity daily. When you conquer the daily distractions, you gain more hours in your week. To create a routine that fits your life, you would first need to make a note of all the things you need to get done in any given day.

This list needs to have both professional and personal life tasks, since they go hand in hand. For your professional list, you would create a routine that establishes what steps you need to take in order to finish a project.

This routine can be based on daily or weekly habits. Once you have the list written down, you’ll want to look over it to see what can be lumped together. For example, if you know you get distracted from work by returning phone calls, save responding until you’re doing something on your daily routine, such as walking on the treadmill during your exercise regimen.

It can be helpful to use a planner to schedule your routine. Your routine may take some tweaking once you get started, but don’t be afraid to ditch what’s not working for you and changing it up for what will help you.

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.

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.

Consider the Pomodoro Technique for Increased Focus and Creativity

If you have trouble allowing little distractions to pull you away from your work several times a day, the Pomodoro Technique might be a great fit for you. This is a great time management method.

This technique is also great for those who have work that could take an unlimited amount of time like if you were writing a book. The Pomodoro Technique has four basic steps.

The first step is to simply pick a task from your to-do list. The second step is to set a timer for twenty-five minutes and you would only work on that task for the allotted amount of time.

This means you wouldn’t pause to check social media or have any distractions open in the background. It also means that you wouldn’t switch to a task that you find easier or feel more urgent.

Once your twenty-five minutes are up, the next step in the method is to take a five-minute break. After the break, you would then choose a new task, or return to your first task if it wasn’t complete and work for another twenty-five minutes.

Each task is referred to as your pomodoro. Once you’ve done four pomodoros, or after four of your twenty-fine minute sessions, the final step is to take a break that is at least fifteen minutes long.

This final break shouldn’t exceed thirty minutes. This technique has become so popular because it helps you break down complex projects into ones with manageable amounts of time.

It can be hard to doing research for five hours, but it becomes easier when you do it in twenty-five-minute sprints. You can also put more than one pomodoro in a session. So for example, if you have some simpler tasks like folding laundry or paying the doctor bill you can put them together in one session.

You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can cross things off your to-do list when you use this technique. If you’re in the middle of a pomodoro and you remember you need to do something else, don’t stop.

Simply write the forgotten task down and continue working. For this technique to work, it’s important that you don’t stop during the middle of one. Some interruptions—such as needing to pick kids up—are unavoidable.

If this happens during one of your pomodoros, simply take that time as your break, and start a new pomodoro after the interruption is over. You may find it useful to plan your pomodoros in advance to head off interruptions.

Divide your blocks of time into sections and write next to these sections what you’re going to accomplish during your pomodoro. You can also write down how many pomodoros you think it will take you, or how many you would like it to take you and then strive to reach that goal.

It’s important when planning your pomodoros not to assign yourself so much that you can’t cross everything off the list. This will leave you feeling like you failed or that it didn’t work at the end of the day. Start with the more pressing and urgent tasks, and if you have more time, then work on the smaller things.

A Proven Way to Boost Your Creativity and Focus

You might be a creative who wants to find more ways to up your productivity and your focus. But if you’re like most creatives, focus might not be your strength. You’re not alone in thinking that way.

Most creatives don’t think in concrete, specific terms when it comes to business things. That’s because the business side feels removed from the creative side. So what you need to do is tap into the creative side to boost the business side.

There is a proven way that you can boost your creativity to get more accomplished and be able to reach your goals. You have to get specific with your thoughts. Sort of having an idea of what you want, or need isn’t going to work.

It’s only when something is specific that you can identify it and work on accomplishing it.

Once you’ve narrowed down what it is you’re after, add a time constraint. For example, if money is what you need, you wouldn’t spend time saying, “Think about where or how I can get more money.”

Instead, you’d say, “What are 5 business models I can put into effect within 10 minutes?” This helps you to develop concrete ways to help take your creativity to the next level.

By having a specific goal with your thoughts, you’ll come up with ideas to improve whatever it is that you need. This step of coming up with ideas within a certain time limit keeps you from wasting time, but it also works for creatives because they don’t have to spend a lot of time thinking of the business side, which can drain creativity.

The ideas that you come up with by adding time constraints can also be put into play faster than if you were vague and spent hours or days trying to come up with a solution.

With your business, you’ll need to learn the best way to market it.

You might have gone back and forth trying to come up with ways that you could do this, but you weren’t able to pin anything down. Rather than spending a lot of effort thinking about this step, you could say that you were going to make a list of the pros and cons of a certain kind of advertising within 15 minutes.

By giving yourself that time limit, you turn into a game and this can produce quicker results and give you ideas for solutions. Plus, when you’re specific about what you want and you introduce that time limit, it boosts your creativity because your focus is intentional rather than running in different directions. It does this because it’s easier for the mind to focus for shorter periods of time versus thinking that you have several hours or days to come up with something.

How to Bounce Back From Past Failures

It is not good enough to know the benefits of starting over and banishing the past. You also have to know how to go about starting the new journey. Many people desire to let go of the past and focus on the present. However, many fail because they lack the skills and information to do it right. This chapter will empower you with the knowledge and skills you need to start this new journey.

Treat The Past As A Lesson

According to psychologists, intelligence is the ability to learn from experience to make better decisions in the future. Therefore, whoever does not learn from the mistakes of the past cannot be referred to as an intelligent person. You should be able to draw out lessons from your experience to improve your decision-making. For example, if you have been in an abusive relationship before, you should remember those factors that made you surrender yourself to a dictator.

If it was because you depended on him or her for sustenance, then you should not enter another relationship until you have a job. You need to empower yourself and be valuable by making your own money. In the same way, if it was because you had low self-esteem, you need to work on that before entering a new relationship. You should be learning from what has happened to you in the past to avoid making the same mistakes...

It’s not likely that you commit to something when you are not sure about what you stand to gain by doing it. Forgetting about the past to start over has numerous benefits. This chapter will explore some of them to give you the impetus to start making changes that will give you a new lease of life.

High Self-Esteem

Your self-esteem is a product of the way you see yourself. It will be low when you feel that you don’t deserve to be loved and treasured. Note that you cannot separate self-esteem from self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the level of confidence you have in your ability to succeed in a task before you attempt it. It is vital that you have high self-efficacy because it makes others trust you to handle their projects on their behalf.

You need to earn the trust of people before you can be given the opportunity to prove yourself. Meanwhile, the only way you can convince them that you can do the job is when you have confidence in your ability to get the job done. Even when you have the qualifications for a job, you’ll still be doubted when you sound unsure about your chance of success in the task...

You’ll be stuck in the past when you think it has a vital role to play in your chances of future success. However, it’s not true that you cannot thrive again because of your mistakes and past failures. The future promises a lot if only you are willing to let go of the past. This chapter examines why the past doesn’t define the future of an individual.

The Past is a Closed Chapter

Treat your life like a book. Your experiences are previous chapters. The present moment is the chapter you are reading. In most cases, you don’t go back to a chapter you have read. You only flip back to those pages when you have something you didn’t get correctly. In some cases, you also flip back to that chapter when you find a similar concept in the current chapter. The implication of this is that you should only remember your past when you need to draw lessons from it.

You will not make progress if you remain stuck in a chapter of a book and refuse to read on. In fact, you might find better explanations regarding a particular concept you find difficult to understand in the subsequent chapters. Life is like that. Sometimes, you will not understand why some things happened the way they did until you forge ahead. For example, you might find out why your former boss treated you wrongly later. It could have been because of a jealous colleague....

When you have refused to start over, you are endangering yourself in various ways. As earlier mentioned, it can make you lose sight of the opportunities around you. This chapter explores what you stand to lose when you’re stuck in the past.

Depression

According to the World Health Organization, depression is a leading psychological problem affecting millions of people around the world. Note that depression is different from the occasional mood swings we have because of an unpleasant event. Depression is more intense and persistent than that. When you are depressed, you will not want to talk to anyone. You will prefer to stay on your bed rather than go out to have social interactions. At that moment, everything in the world becomes colorless and tasteless to you.

Note that depression can become fatal in the long run. It can lead to suicidal ideation. In other words, depression can make you feel like taking your life. Meanwhile, you should never get to that point. There is nothing worth it in this world that should make you feel that taking your life is the best option. As long as you are still alive, you can still rewrite your story. No one is denying that you are hurt, but you cannot get stuck in the past. The price can be too costly. ..

In the words of Chuck Palahniuk, “Your past is just a story. And once you realize this, it has no power over you.” These words were spoken some years ago. However, they are still as potent and relevant as the first time they were spoken. If only many people realized this simple but extremely powerful truth, life would have been easier for them. We would have had more individuals that are less cranky and frustrated in the world.

Some people struggle to overcome their past demons. For instance, bad experience from their past relationships often hinder them from building robust and happy relationships in the future. They built a mental wall and find it difficult to trust another person or commit into another relationship. Letting past experiences interfere with our future is detrimental to our growth and mental wellbeing. This chapter will explore some vital things about the past you need to know.

Life is a Journey

This statement might sound like a cliché, but it’s not. You have to realize that life is a journey. In fact, it is an experience we are all having for the first and last time. In other words, no one has been to this world before that is now having another opportunity to live it all over again. Indeed, there are people who are experienced in this world. However, their experiences are all parts of their journey in life...