Online business expansion

You have to learn that every distraction is going to sidetrack you from your work, no matter how harmless it seems. Each one can break you from your concentration and can disrupt your momentum.  Moreover, distractions will wreak havoc on your productivity and affect the quality of your work. Therefore, with this chapter, we are going to look at the extent that you have difficulty  concentrating.  With each of the 15 statements below, give yourself a score from one to five  depending on how true each statement is to you. A score of one means that the statement describes  you, and a score of five indicates that it does not at all.  When you are done, tally the results to see  how big of a problem focus is for you. 1. Thoughts that are irrelevant to the situation will constantly surface when you are working 2. Your workspace is always filled with lots of clutter 3. You forget a lot of things and are absentminded 4. You do not...

Procrastination is a big issue when it comes to keeping your focus. All of us have had times when we do not want to get work done. The work may be boring. You may think the work is too overwhelming, so why even try to work on it at all?  Alternatively, perhaps there is some other reason that you decide to put off work. It might not even be a reason that you can readily identify. If you receive a project and then decide to procrastinate getting it done, you can guess that your focus is going to be low. You have no interest in even starting, so why would you put your focus towards doing it?  That certainly doesn’t make any sense, does it?  While a bit of procrastination is not the end of the world, it can end up being a big issue if you partake in it all the time. Human beings have limited self-control. Self-control is like a muscle, in that it can become quickly exhausted, and in some people, this happens much faster than in others. It all depends on th...

You may be surprised to find out that the ability to focus is going to have a big impact on your life. Musicians, artists, and writers stand to produce much more work with more passion if they are focused.  There are all sorts of actors and musicians that can admit that a project failed because of their lack of passion during that period in their life when they look back on their careers. Professors and teachers can create better exams, assignments, and lectures to help their students succeed if they have more focus. Parents can come up with better activities that are more creative, fun, and educational for their children if they have more focus. It is actually our lack of focus, or our inability to focus, that can produce uninspiring results in all the things that we do, but this is not the way it has to be. You can take the steps needed to manage your attention, which will be covered extensively in this guidebook.  Why should you work so hard to increase your...

Many factors are going to impair your ability to stay focused, and you may be more likely to fall prey to one more than the others, but it is possible that each of these could become your enemy at some point.  Some of the most common obstacles that you can face when you are trying to stay focused include:  • Mental fatigue  • Restlessness  • Stress  • Interruptions  • Lack of mental clarity  • Unresolved problems  • Poor planning  • Physical clutter  • Social media  • Your phone  Let’s take a look at each obstacle and how it interrupts your ability to focus. Mental fatigue If your brain is tired, it is difficult to focus, making you more prone to distractions, which makes it difficult for you to zero in on the tasks that you want to get done. Mental exhaustion can come from several factors, but the biggest one is a lack of sleep. Even when you get to bed on time, if you spend the majority of th...

You know what it is like to be sitting at your desk with a lot of work, but for some reason, you just cannot seem to concentrate. You are distracted. Every noise that goes on around you—from the traffic outside to a notification on your phone—has the power today to pull your attention away from your work. Moreover, when you do finish the work, you have a big feeling that the quality has suffered because you were not able to focus. This is something with which most people are familiar. The work takes twice as long and quality suffers because you are just not able to control the distractions around you. This can lead to selfdoubt. It can also be frustrating until you learn how to master your own attention. In order to help you strengthen the focus that you do have, it is important to learn why you may be losing your focus in the first place. There are usually five factors that contribute to a lack of focus:  • Lack of interest  • Negative emotions  • Poor o...

UNDERSTANDING THE BASICS OF FOCUS   When you think about having focus, you may equate it with having tunnel vision—the belief that you can ignore everything, and just focus on the task that is right in front of you. However, attention management and focus are actually much more complicated than that. In reality, you are managing many different types of attention throughout the day, whether you realize it or not.  These types dictate what you notice, do not notice, as well as what you ignore, or focus on. They can also have some different uses and impose different challenges. Taking a closer look at focus will help this make a little more sense. Voluntary and involuntary attention Two main types of attention are voluntary and involuntary. Voluntary attention is what you use when you want to consciously, or purposely, focus on something.  For instance, if you are in a room while someone else is watching television, and you want to read a book, you may fi...