Five Ways to Focus at Work

Many of us know that less than half of the time we spent at work is actually spent doing work. We deal with plenty of time killers at work- unnecessary activities that serve to distract us and lower our productivity. These may range from long, unproductive work meetings to checking facebook and emails more often than needed. Here are five ways to become more focused at work.

1. Organize your workstation: How many times have you spent minutes or sometimes hours searching for a particular business card or a post-it note that you had scribbled a number on. Organizing your workstation so that you know exactly where everything belongs can help you avoid this vexing situation and can go a long way towards boosting your productivity. Of course, in order for your workstation to stay organized, you need to keep cleaning up on a regular basis.
2. Reconsider your phone conversations: While small talk is necessary to maintain business relations, make sure business conversations are concise and factual. Don’t interrupt important tasks to take non-priority calls as you could lose your train of thought. You could always return them later. And always make it a priority to return important calls if you are unable to take them due to any reason.
3. Have an organized inbox: Organizing your emails is just as important as organizing your workspace to get easy access to important documents and contacts. Just like your time on social media, reduce the frequency at which you check your emails during the day.
4. Reduce the time spent on social media: Unless you are a marketing, PR or branding professional where social media activity is an integral part of your job, there really is no reason why you should be checking your social media channels every five minutes. Social media platforms do help you to stay abreast of what your closest friends and family members are up to but it can be a major source of distraction at work. Focus on consciously lengthening the intervals at which you check on your social media accounts as reading or commenting on one post can lead to reading articles or seeing video, and with one thing leading to another, you will wonder whether why it is 6 pm already. If needs must, use a separate browser for work.
5. Make and stay focused on your to-do list: At the beginning of every day, make a to-do list of your tasks for the day and keep it in front of you so that you stay focused.