Chapter 7: Execute and follow through consistently
Use different strategies to stay focused.
Daily practices, visuals, and timers can help you stay focused.
Read through these strategies and identify 1 to experiment with over the next week.
To focus:
Daily practices:
Remind yourself of your larger goals and today’s priorities by reading them, writing them, or repeating them to yourself daily. It’s easy to get distracted with new priorities. Come back to what you originally decided are your priorities. You can re-evaluate as needed, but remind yourself of what they are before changing to new priorities without thinking about it.
Utilize timers to start a task - maybe 5 minutes, 15 minutes, or 20 minutes - tell yourself that you’ll focus for that amount of time and set a timer.
Refer to your calendar to see what you what’s next or what you decided you want to focus on in that time period.
During meetings, take notes, give yourself questions to answer during the meeting, or use a fidget toy. Consider standing up or walking, depending on the meeting. Be self-aware of how you’re able to focus, what tools help you.
Recognize when you’re procrastinating and reflect on why. Is it too boring? Is there plenty of time before it’s due? Is it not challenging enough? Then, think of if there’s a way to make it more interesting, create pressure to complete it, or make it more challenging. You can tell someone that it will be done by a certain time and create a meaningful consequence if it’s not done. You can create mini-challenges to work on it - see if you can get it done before the next meeting, create a reward for if you get it done you get to treat yourself to something, or come up with challenging questions you need to answer with the work that you’re doing… be creative, but make it interesting, create time pressure, and make it challenging (can be the same as interesting).
Visuals:
Leverage a whiteboard or erasable planning poster to write in BIG letters, your priorities or due dates, or actions that you want to remember.
Keep a piece of paper or post-it with today’s priorities listed, so you can easily see it throughout the day.
As you identify new tasks, write them down, so you can see the list and prioritize as needed.
Repeating, visualizing, and leveraging timers tends to help to stay focused.