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During the 25 minute of work time you don’t reply to anyone (and preferably don’t check your phone or mail) and during the 5 minute break time you can reply to anyone you want, send messages or simply relax and clear your mind to help increase your focus while you are in the 25 minute work period. The Pomodoro method states one should work for a set time (25 minutes is usually suggested) and then take a 5 minute break. To make it easier for you mentally, take planned breaks. Someone on the other side of it is waiting for something! Remember that not too long ago we didn’t have mobile phones, and e-mail was not in our pocket, easily accessible. We all want to reply to that message or mail we just received.This will give you better control over your task and will reduce losing focus while jumping between tasks For example, even if you get a text message you need to ignore it and focus on the one task you are currently working on, and remember you don’t start anything else till that task is done (even not replying to a message). This means you work on one thing at a time. However, there are some simple things you can do in order to stay focused while you work and not let these distractions stop you from completing your task. Seeing the operating system’s notification of “You’ve got mail” or a WhatsApp notification on our phone, takes us out of our “zone” and into someone else’s “schedule”. It has been reported that 23% of all work distractions come from emails. Such notifications take our focus away from the task at hand. This usually leads to stopping what we were doing, reading them, thinking about them, replying and so on. For example, notifications come in when someone ELSE sends them. Controlling your time is key to getting the work you need done. Many don’t see it, but our time is controlled by others for most of the day. It is the only way we can really accomplish all of our tasks and meet our goals. We spend somewhere between 35%-55% of our time in meetings, which makes staying focused while we work extremely important. In addition to these distractions, Some of us have days that consist of lots of meetings. Our attention span runs between 10-20 minutes, so it’s easy to understand how one will quickly drift off from the task in hand. For some, these distractions include reading emails or reading a notification they have received on their phone, for others it’s checking what their friends are doing on Facebook or Instagram for example.
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The digital age has brought a lot of good, but we now realize more and more that it also brings distractions – a lot of them.Įmployees who work mainly on their computers (and let’s be honest, most of us do), are distracted every 10.5 minutes on average. To put it simply, staying focused while you study or work makes you more productive. Not many know this, but once distracted and moving away from a task, it takes us 23 minutes to go back into deep focus.
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