The Fastest Way to Success: Training Your Mind to Focus

Consider some of the ingredients for success in the business world: Effective marketing strategies, networking skills, an ambitious-yet-realistic business plan. While striving to accomplish tasks and accelerate your journey toward business success, much depends on your ability to focus. Avoiding distractions and keeping your mind on the specific goal at hand will get you to the finish line much faster than your associates who lose precious time attempting to “multi-task.”

I’d like to share a few tips with you to assist in your development of this crucial skill.

• Refine your goals

  It’s easy to lose sight or direction on your path to success without a well-defined trail of tasks. This series of smaller objectives will cumulatively result in your successful achievement of a larger business goal. For example:

Generalized goal: Increase revenue during the second quarter.

Refined goal: Implement three new cost-effective strategies at the start of the second quarter.

In this instance, implementing your cost-effective strategies means focusing on a series of smaller, more specific tasks in order to achieve your larger goal of increasing revenue. Breaking a daunting goal or deadline down into a series of more manageable cumulative steps provides you with additional direction.

• Adjust your perception of obstacles and setbacks.

  Circumstances out of your control, less-than-desirable results and other unexpected roadblocks are almost inevitable on your road to success. Achieving your larger career goals may suddenly seem very far away, and a smaller setback accompanied by negative self-attacks can snowball, ultimately affecting your productivity and drive to succeed. When this happens, try reframing your thoughts surrounding the obstacle or setback with fact-based, goal-oriented thoughts to help keep you on track.

Original thought: “We haven’t even met 50% of our sales goals during the first half of the fiscal year. This new venture is a complete failure.”

Reframed thought: “We learned a great deal about our targeted customer base early on. This will be very helpful in adjusting our product details and marketing strategies for the remainder of the year.”

Acknowledging the setback and adjusting your response allows you to turn a situation around and use it to maintain focus and further motivate you toward achieving your business goals.

• Further develop your ability to concentrate and increase your attention span.

  Diversions ranging from social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter to television commercials and text messages, command our attention daily for only seconds at a time – contributing to a shorter attention span and ability to focus. Try a few of the following methods to increase your focus and improve your attention span:

-Think of your ability to concentrate as an endurance sport.

In order to maintain concentration on a business-related task for longer periods of time, begin small and gradually increase your attention span over time – literally train your brain. Setting a timer and allowing yourself short breaks can be helpful; lengthen the amount of time between breaks to build endurance.

-Avoid multitasking

The concept of “multitasking,” or performing multiple tasks at once, is a misnomer. When doing this, your mind is not focused on several tasks at once, but is instead taking turns between these tasks for shorter amounts of time. Talk about a way to shorten your attention span!

-Cultivate an ideal working environment for yourself that encourages concentration.

Eliminate elements you know to be distractions to your concentration. If necessary, add elements to your surroundings that encourage you to focus. For one person, closing down a browser tab devoted to email and playing non-lyrical music at a low volume may be helpful; another person may find the whir of coffee machines and layers of conversation in a café environment to be a great source of white noise.

This is just the tip of the iceberg! Whether you’re seeking to maximize productivity, or to manage the unexpected, increasing and maintaining focus is key to streamlining your path to business success.

Until next time, Think BIG and Give THANKS