Do you know what is the average period a person can focus on something? Less than a minute. Yes, you have read that right!

No wonder #focus and the tips to improve it are trending everywhere on the internet. The lesser the focus, the lesser is the productivity.

On a typical workday, most of us are distracted by many factors such as e-mail notifications, social media messages, noises around us, and many more. These are external distractions.

Imagine yourself being locked inside a room without your mobile phone, internet, or any external disturbances. Can you guarantee that you can #focus on your task at hand completely? Surprisingly, the answer is NO!

This proves that our #focus is affected not just by external factors but more by internal disturbances. The culprit here is our mind.

You might be sitting in the room trying to complete an assignment, while your mind wanders around and #focuses on a little ant crawling on the floor. #Focus can be of different types.

Some types of tasks such as preparing for a meeting need deep focus while some other routine tasks such as brushing your teeth need partial focus. Whatever may be the type of #focus, these 5 ways to deal with distractions help you to be more productive.

1. List down your tasks and prioritize them – Most of the time, we lack focus because we lack clarity on tasks that need to be done. Eliminate this ambiguity by listing down your tasks. Once listed, categorize them as productive and unproductive. Pick the productive ones and prioritize them based on the urgency, deadlines, etc. This #clarity calms down the mind chatter to a great extent.

2. Give yourself strict short-term deadlines for long-term projects – Did you notice that a student is super productive just a day before the exam? Many of us perform better and faster if we know we have less time to finish it. So, if you know you have a month to submit a project, create some micro-goals with strict deadlines. For example – Complete the requirement analysis by this week, etc. This automatically makes you #focus better and work faster.

3. Steer clear of known external distractions – When you want to deeply #focus on anything, stay clear of social media app notifications, outlook notifications, or any kind of noises. You can find many applications or programs which help you to stay focused. Download one of them and use it. When external disturbances are minimal, the only other thing to deal with is our mind.

4. Reward yourself at the end of every deep focus time slot – Promise yourself a treat each time you were able to successfully #focus for the time you wanted to. It can be as simple as ten minutes of mobile browsing time after every twenty minutes of deep focus period.

5. Do the unattractive yet necessary tasks first – When you list down the tasks, you might notice that there are some tasks that do not appeal to you or attract your attention. These may be regular tasks such as laundry, or grocery shopping. However, you have to do them as a part of your daily chores. These are unattractive yet necessary. Choose to do such tasks in your most productive time and get done with them as early as possible. This will give room for you to #focus on attractive and meaningful tasks later.

Remember that the direction of focus is the direction your life will move. Hence, focus on prioritized things to achieve success!