Do you find it hard to stay focused during this lockdown? Staying at home due to COVID-19 pandemic also brings unprecedented challenges. Though you need to fix things up, please don’t be too hard on yourself. Amidst of the crisis, you can overcome distractions and here are some tips to do it:

Stop Comparing

One of the most common causes of distractions is rooted in envy. While it’s not wrong to observe how your competitors are doing, it becomes counterproductive and unhealthy when you’re no longer accomplishing anything because you’re too focused on what others are doing.

Feeling envious of others’ success stories shouldn’t derail you from focusing on your business and the projects you have in the pipeline. Instead of comparing, why don’t you shift the way you feel about seeing these updates, and let them serve as fuel that will motivate you even more.

Be Mindful

According to a Harvard study, approximately 50% of our waking time is spent on thinking about all sorts of things other than what we really were supposed to be doing. This wandering mind phenomenon may hurt business productivity, especially if you are already running out of time to hit your monthly or quarterly targets.

Overcoming this requires you to be more vigilant of your thoughts. Once you’ve noticed your mind starting to drift, realign your intentions so you can focus on what needs to be done.

This is similar when you’re using social media. We’re all guilty of falling into the social media rabbit hole, even if our intention to log-in is just to check something.  If you do feel the urge to do this, pause, think of your goals, and head back to the task of hand.

It takes some time and practice, and it will be hard the first few times. But being mindful of your thoughts will help you accomplish more.

Get Enough Sleep

The number of hours of sleep you get every night can determine how focused you are during the work day. Even if you think you can finish everything in a day, you may find yourself in a slump if you’re not getting enough rest.

Make sure you’re getting the right amount of quality sleep each night. If needed, sneak in some micro naps during the day so you get an extra boost of energy to get the tasks done.

Update Your Process

If you’ve been finding it hard to focus lately, maybe it’s time for you to start doing things differently. Explore new and possibly better ways of managing your business. From trying out new online marketing strategies to learning more about the different investment ventures to consider, doing something fresh will help keep you focused at work.

Managing Emotions

Most of the time, people would assume that beating procrastination means being better at time management. But according to studies compiled in a recent BBC article, distractions all boil down in managing one’s emotions.

Instead of telling yourself to get back on track and work by forcing yourself to get things done in shorter time frames or self-imposing deadlines, you need to address why you’re procrastinating first. More than time, procrastination should be seen as an issue of how difficult some tasks make us feel.

If we feel bad or bored about something, the tendency is we try to divert our attention elsewhere. How often do we find ourselves sneaking away from work just to watch some videos? Or how often do we check our social media profiles instead of finishing the tasks at hand? 

Identify why you feel bad in the first place. From there, recall why you need to work. Knowing the answers to both of these questions will let you find clarity and figure out the next steps so you can accomplish what you set out in the first place