Want to be less busy? Use the focus trick.

The quickest way to get started with attention is to know what you want to achieve. This creates a natural focus. You can leverage your natural focus to become less busy.

Making good use of your time and talent makes you more effective and gives you more satisfaction with what you have done. Really sitting down for something, with your attention fully focused on the subject, simply makes you clearer, the quality higher and the work finished sooner.

It makes you feel that you have a grip on the situation and that you are contributing to the bigger picture.

Your natural focus

The quickest way to get started with attention is to know what you want to achieve. This creates a natural focus to which your attention is naturally drawn.

It’s a “trick” that makes it easier to keep your thoughts in check. Despite its benefits, working with attention seems like an impossible task for many people. “There’s so much to be done, I can’t ignore all that anyway.”

Fortunately, there are ways to make focusing your attention easier, and thus become more effective and fulfilled.

The “focus trick” makes it easy to focus your attention.

The “focus trick” makes it easy to focus your attention. The method gives you a foothold in your work and makes you less busy in your head with all kinds of other things.

4 helpful examples of the focus trick

Example 1. Focus in your preparation.

If you have a meeting you need to attend, you can prepare by determining what you want to accomplish there. Often a variety of issues will come up at the meeting.

At best, you have prepared and read the papers. But if you think in advance what your opinion is, where you think it should go or what point you want to have made in this consultation, you have a clear focus.

Naturally, you become more alert to what’s happening, talk along with what is important and let go of things that are less important.

Example 2. Focus with a framework

If you need to write a piece, develop an idea or create a plan of action, you can focus by first creating a framework. A chapter outline summarizing what content should go where.

For many people, this is the most difficult step, which is why they often skip it. The advantage is that once you have this framework, filling it in is much easier. And loose thoughts that then “pop up” you can immediately put in the right chapter.

Example 3. Focus with a checklist.

When doing routine jobs such as updating your administration, it happens easily that all kinds of things come up in between. Actually, you’d like that too, because it’s boring and you don’t want to deal with it.

Since it has to be done anyway and feels fulfilled when it’s finished, you better get it done as quickly and effectively as possible. What helps is making a checklist. A few simple steps on paper will give you the power to stay focused on what needs to be finished.

Example 4. Focus with time.

Of some jobs, it is difficult to estimate in advance how much time they will take. This is especially true if you are doing or developing something new. You can then use the time as a focus by agreeing with yourself how long you will work on it.

When you know that you give yourself 2 hours to do part of the story, it immediately draws your focus to actually work on this and spend 2 hours focused.

It also works the other way around: if you get stuck in something, stop and agree with yourself when you will continue with it. Your “subconscious” then goes to work, so that solutions will automatically surface. Playing sports can help give that subconscious a helping hand.

So…. Want it less busy or stressed?

then use 1 of the focus tricks to focus your full attention on the work you want to do. It makes you work more effectively, finish faster and get satisfaction from your efforts. And that, in turn, is good for your self-confidence!