Keeping Focus in the Web Circus
The Internet is an incredibly powerful tool. At it’s best it’s an enormous dynamic repository of information that’s accessible and intuitive. At it’s worst it’s a cesspool of trivialities and distractions. If you work at home and depend on Internet access to complete your job, you’ve probably spent more than a few minutes surfing the web when you could have been doing something more productive.
Keyboard cats, Rick Astley, dancing inmates and Chuck Norris: these are the enemies of productivity. With entertaining content pulling us in all directions it can be tough to focus on what’s important: getting work done.
So how do you keep focus with so many distractions just a click away?
Create Tasks and Goals
Tasks and goals give your daily schedule some structure. Analyze and prioritize all your tasks and set realistic goals about how many you can complete in a day. Deadlines are an incredible motivator and should help you keep your focus.
Before turning on your computer, create a handwritten list of the things you want to accomplish. By putting pen to paper you’ll you’re making a commitment to yourself that you’ll get things done.
Setup Email Filters
If you receive a lot of personal emails from friends and family, you should consider creating filters in your email client. Filters can sort emails based on a number of criteria and will help you separate personal and professional emails.
By setting up filters you’ll transform your inbox from a dumping ground with no organization to a prioritized archive that will help you manage your work and personal emails better.
Change your IM Status
Sometimes IM clients like AIM, ICQ, Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, etc. are necessary for quickly discussing project details with customers or clients. However, they can also cause a disruption in your productivity if you’re not careful how you use them.
Be sure to change your IM Status to ‘Away’ or ‘Busy’ when working so your IM ‘buddies’ don’t message you looking for a chat. In most IM clients, you can also create filters that separate personal and professional contacts, so you’ll only appear online to people that need to contact you.
Subscribe to RSS Feeds
Do you have regular sites that you check often for news and updates? Well, each time you divert your attention to those sites you’re taking your focus away from work tasks and affecting productivity. Even then, there’s no guarantee that you’ll find the update you were hoping for.
Instead, why not subscribe to your favorite websites through RSS feeds? When you subscribe to an RSS feed, content is automatically delivered to your email or stored in browser bookmarks where you can read them during your downtime.
Give Yourself a Break
If you’re finding it hard to concentrate, sometimes all that’s needed to regain your focus is a break. Take some time away from your tasks and give yourself a mental break. Go for a walk, cook a meal, phone a friend, just remember to resume work once you’ve given yourself enough of a break.
Another technique for keeping focus is time boxing. What is time boxing? It’s the practice of completing tasks through a series of predetermined periods of time. In other words, instead of starting a task and working on it until completion, you’ll schedule yourself to work on several tasks, each for a set amount of time until each one is completed. Time boxing works wonders when working on repetitive or monotonous tasks.
