How to Stay Focused: Four Simple Things to Implement This Week

The key to stay focused on your goals is to make sure you implement the following four activities this week.

I will tell you in a minute, what they are. I would like to take a step back before doing so.

I do get busy a lot, and I also get overwhelmed quite often. Too often, actually.
When that happens I start to think about how I can use my tools at hand to organize my life better. That only helps for one aspect of the problem, though.

In my view, the rest depends on me. On my mindset, on my willingness and on my capabilities. And on all that combined.

Can you relate?

How to Stay Focused – insights from a Mixergy interview

Just last Friday, I listened to the audio version of this interview on Mixergy with Andrew Warner. The interview partner, Hal Elrod is actually a sales expert (at selling knives), and they discuss sales tactics during the interview, but this is not the main point here.

When watching (or listening) to this interview, you will notice how driven Hal is. He is big in goal setting. He is also big in ACHIEVING his goals. In the second half of the interview he reveals parts of his recipe. He literally tells us what we need to do to stay focused.

In my view, his “success concept” is based on four things:

1. Daily goal setting
2. Master Your Skill set
3. Avoidance of Unnecessary Distractions & Determination
4. Daily relaxation

Let us go into details one by one:

1. Daily goal setting (convert big goals into bite-sized actions)

The importance of setting goals is not new, the difficulty does not necessarily lie within creating those goals. The difficulty often is to apply a somewhat reverse engineering system to reduce these goals into daily goals and bite-sized actions. Once small steps are clearly defined, the big goal seems not so unrealistic anymore and we can start to take one step at a time.

2. Master Your Skill set

Be clear about what you are good at. If you are, focus on mastering that skill set and try to delegate the rest. If you do not have anyone to delegate to, think about outsourcing, if that is financially feasible. People will notice how bright you are, how ambitious you are and they will see your commitment. At the latest by then, you will notice it too.

3. Avoidance of Unnecessary Distractions & Determination

If you want to achieve your goals, if you want to excel, you need to be determined and you need to shut off all possible distractions to keep you focused. One of my latest decisions of this month is to check my emails only three times per day. You cannot imagine how much more focused I am on the topic at hand, because I do not have this “ping” appearing on my screen all the time.

4. Daily relaxation

Regular relaxation exercises, whether in the morning or in the evening, whether 10 minutes long or one hour – they do wonders. Now, you might be somebody who recharges their batteries through doing sports, that is fine as well. Dedicating some time per day to yourself helps you to achieve more, because you are more relaxed, you have a clearer mindset and you have a greater possibility to stay focused on your topics. A lot of people tell me that they feel less tired too, even if they work long hours, if they ‘just’ take a daily break to relax.

Would this work for you?

Now, in terms of encouragement, I really recommend listening to this interview to you – when you have the time available. You can watch it here below or you can also download it here as a podcast for your trip to work or when exercising.

And, there is more to this interview than ‘just’ the four points mentioned above, trust me.

Enjoy and please share with me below what you think!

If you loved this article, share it on Twitter by clicking here.

Photo courtesy by Mark Hunter