How to focus better? That’s a question many of us ask ourselves at one point in our work lives—how do we actually focus in better way on the tasks at hand? What are some of the hacks to direct all our concentration and energy on one task as we do it, so that we can complete it in the most efficient manner?

Productive. How do we become productive?

How to Focus Better? And Smarter?

How do we become productive? Or do you? 

Scientifically estimated, our brain—in one single second, receives upto eleven million bits of information in the form of sensory experiences. These may include sight, sound or touch, including all the other types of senses our environment directly communicates with us. 

Do you now want to know the shocking relevation made about how many of these bits of information does our brain consciously process and focus on? 

Forty. 

No, not forty thousand. Just forty, out of eleven million. 

Wow. 

 

 Are you able to manage your tasks well—such that not all of your time is spent on planning and organizing, and you do manage to get as far as accomplishing your designated task? 

This is a brief guide on how to focus on tasks at hand at one single moment and manage your attention well so that you don’t waste your time and energy, and are able to give the best you can do, be it in any situation—professional or personal.

The human brain is truly spectacular and amazing to study, but there comes the limit. This is not the limit of our brain, but the limit of how much our brain can focus on during one single moment—these are called our attentional bits. They take up our brain’s attentional space—which is like this go-to notepad that comes in handy whenever we want to store some information for ourselves to be used in short-term. 

To explain it deeply, we take up an example. 

When You Don’t Focus Better…

Like, suppose you are having a conversation on the phone with a friend about a dinner party the two of you are planning. You’re in a Cafe, and also writing an email to an IT firm for a job you’re hoping to get. 

Too much on your plate, huh?

“Your house or mine?” Your friend asks, just as you finish a sentence on the email and hit the enter. 

You hum. “I’m okay with either,” you say, just as a waiter arrives to get the order. You’re a regular customer in this Cafe, but the waiter seems new. 

“What would you like to have, sir?” He asks, and you look up at him, forgetting that your friend is saying something in your ear. 

It takes you a second to think over your answer, since your mind is still running over what you should type at the email you’re sending. It has to be perfect since you need this job. 

“Uh, scrambled eggs and a coffee,” you say to the waiter, and he nods and leaves. 

“What do you say?” Your friend asks. 

“Uh, what?” You mutter, staring at the body of your email. “Repeat that, Martin.” Since you ask him to repeat, he does, and you can hear him talking and you listen, but just then your eyes, which were scanning over the email, spot a silly spelling error in the subject. 

The subject, honestly. Think about what the receiver would think about you! 

You hurry to correct the mistake. 

And you miss again what your friend was saying. 

“Er…” you pause, embarrassed to ask him to say it again. So you don’t, you just nod along, hoping you could pick up the conversation from where you left it off. 

“Yeah, so, we can have the party at your house,” you say. 

“What?” His vocie comes over the speaker. “But, we just agreed that it would be at your house. Weren’t you listening?” 

You groan, unable to think of how to end the email. Your mind stops working and your friend is constantly bugging you. He calls your name over the line a few times, and you suck in a breath. 

“Hey, can I call you back in a few minutes?” You ask. 

“Uh, okay.” 

“Yeah.” You hang up the call and keep the phone down on the table. 

Then, without any distraction, you finish typing the email. You proofread it too. 

As you do, your breakfast arrives—and you scarf it down as you talk to Martin and decide all the essentials for the party. 

How much easier that is. 

Though you had to do the two things—writing an email and having a conversation with Martin separately, you didn’t multitask and mess it up. 

You thought you could do it—that’s why you brought your laptop to the Cafe—you thought you could do the two things simultaneously. But really, you were messing it up—messing up the email and confusing your friend, and it was all taking you even longer to do that. 

How To Focus Better?

The reason why is that—in one single moment, you tried to cram things in your attention space. Two things which needed active participation from your side had to squeeze themselves in that small space that you had reserved for them, and so they tried to fight for your attention. You had to think and make active decisions while doing them. You had to think and write the email. And you had to think and converse with your friend. You couldn’t think about two things at one time. 

That has a perfectly logical reason behind it. 

Writing the email, talking to the waiter, and talking to your friend—all three of them sent your brain these small sensory bits of information to be processed readily. But since their number was far more than just forty (remember: you might’ve had even more smaller things on your mind, such as thoughts, plans, your to-do list, some worries, daydreams, anything), the attentional space of your brain couldn’t handle them all at once. 

You couldn’t direct your information towards all of them. 

Your Attention Space

Take an example, If this is your attentional space, you try to cram three things (which further consist of small bits of sensory information) into it. 

 They don’t fit. Some things are being pushed out of your attentional space. In general words, these items skip your mind. 

 When you divert your attention solely to the waiter who’s taking the order, you miss what your friend said, and you completely forget the email opened up in front of you. 

 The waiter takes up most of your attentional space at that time. And that series of sensory information pushes the other things out of your attentional space. 

This happens every time. You can’t focus on more than one or two “active” things at once. “Active” is that which requires activities from your brain—which requires your brain to work, unlike habits, which can be performed instinctively. 

Now, the thing is—surely you could perform both the things if you did them separately, but that’s the major thing that consumes time. Especially when you haven’t got much to spare because you’re running late on the schedule, the deadline is close, you want to save time, or you’ve got a lot of things to do. 

So how do you manage these things so that you get work done, without spending all your time on it? You can’t work all day and night. You want to have time when you can work, you want to have time when you rest, and you want to have Me time. 

So how do you divide your work and tasks such that you have got plenty of all of the three? And still have got some to spare?  How do you put your attention on only the important matter to avoid wastage and unproductive spending of time? 

Increase Productivity Without Cramming Your Attention Space

So how do you increase concentration, maximize productivity and make sure your attention space is not overloading?

You never group the important tasks together. 

That’s tricky but it comes naturally if you get the hang of it. 

There are complex tasks—the ones which need you to be aware, which need attention and focus. Like writing an email, reading a book, conversing with someone. While performing these tasks, you, as well as your brain, needs to be present and active. Only this can assure maximum productivity on your part because you’re required to put majority of your concentration on these.

Then there are habits. They are automatic. They happen by themselves, you don’t need to think much while performing them. Do you think before breathing? Do you ask yourself, ‘How do I breathe? I’ve forgotten.’ No, it’s a habit, you’ve done it since even before than you remember. 

Even being a regular customer in a Cafe, and getting a different waiter to serve you everyday (so you have to tell your order every time) is a habit too. The words rest right on top of your tongue as you enter the Cafe. You say it, then you walk to the table. Even that is a habit. 

Now what we really need to do to manage our tasks well in the small attentional space we’re given, is to pair the complex tasks and the habits together. Do them simultaneously, so that the habits take only a little part of your attention space and the rest is available for the complex tasks to occupy. 

Managing Your Attention Space

Now, what you could’ve done that day in the Cafe, instead is—

While you were traveling there (either by your car or by walking) you could’ve talked to your friend and discussed all the party arrangements (no, I don’t support being on the phone and driving at the same time, but I don’t mind keeping the phone on the dashboard and keeping your eyes on the road as you talk). 

If you would’ve talked to your friend on the way (pairing it with walking/driving, and breathing), then he wouldn’t have called you in the Cafe. You would’ve walked in the Cafe without your phone pressed to your ear. You would’ve opened your laptop, sat down, gotten a different waiter than everyday. Then you would’ve typed your email, without any spelling error in the subject. When the waiter would’ve come to take your order, you simply would’ve looked up from the screen, at him, and said that you would take scrambled eggs and a coffee. Then you would’ve finished typing the end of your email as your food came. And you would’ve eaten it. 

And maybe you would’ve had time to spare. Along with having your breakfast, you could’ve checked your new emails and planned ahead the day. 

One thing eliminated from your attentional space and you could’ve done it all effortlessly. 

How To Be A Multitasking Pro?

What is Multitasking?

You do the easy tasks and the hard tasks together. That’s multitasking. 

You don’t do the hard tasks and the hard tasks together and then just hope you could do it all perfectly without making any mistake. 

You’re a human, you need to remember that.

You want to listen to music or an audio book. Why don’t you clean your room too along with it? No harm in that. That way you wouldn’t have to clean your room before bed (which would then count as your Me Time or your resting time). You could do laundry. Or exercise. You could cook. You could draw, do literally anything that would balance your attention well. 

But listening to an audio book and picking up groceries while referring to a list? Either you could miss one or two items from the list, or you could miss a part of the story. 

Along with managing your tasks also comes the requirement of eliminating unnecessary tasks. 

Like spending your time sitting idle and staring into empty space. Being bored, I agree, is good for enhancing your creativity. But what about when you worry about useless things all over nothing? 

Like thinking about the past or being anxious over the future? 

A very great advice I’ve read to stop this overthinking is to divide your time in five- or ten-minute-intervals. Then don’t spend more than one single unit of this time into thinking about something worthless. You want to think about something embarrassing or hurtful in your past? Okay, you’ve got five minutes. Think about it, then stop worrying now. That thing is gone now and you’ve moved on. 

Isn’t it absolutely great to know that you are the only person who can control what you think or do. There’s a great saying which presents it accurately—If something’s bothering you, take away its power: your attention. You are the one who chooses to put your focus on something. And you are also the one who knows what’s the best for you. 

So you can make a list of all the things that work best for you, all the things that are important and mean something to you, and then you can put your focus only on them. 

This is how you manage your tasks. And this is how you fill up your attentional space usefully. 

If your attentional space is capable to storing five tasks together. 

You don’t put 2 and 2 together and make 4. 

You put 4 and 1 together and make 5. 

The key to productivity and multitasking is realizing which two or three tasks to put together. It is to prioritize the important ones over the unimportant ones. It is to stop overthinking or worrying about things that don’t hold importance in your priority list.