One of the biggest obstacles to productivity is not being able to focus. Improving your focus mostly relies on achieving balance in your life between what your brain wants and what it needs to do.

Try to do a little bit extra

If you are having a hard time focusing after a specific period of time, try to put in a little bit more time into the task. This amount of time doesn’t have to be much, but should push you past the point of feeling comfortable.

Remove distractions

When you feel engaged in a particular task, you are more likely to focus on that task at the exclusion of everything else. But when you feel bored with a task, it might feel like anything can distract you from your goal. The best way to keep from getting distracted is to remove as many distractions as possible from your environment.

Take care of yourself

There are sometimes physiological reasons for why you hare having such a difficult time focusing. If you are not getting enough sleep or are not getting enough zinc or omega-3 fatty acids, you will be less able to focus. Try to exercise regularly also in order to keep yourself relaxed.

Don’t think about it

It might sound overly simplistic, but trying to force certain thoughts out of your mind works… sometimes. If you catch yourself daydreaming about laying on a sandy beach, aggressively push those thoughts out of your mind and fill your head instead with that which you are supposed to be thinking about.

Spend time doing what you want

If there is something you badly want to do that keeps distracting you, try giving into the temptation. That doesn’t mean that you should get up and leave the office to play a round of golf. But make sure to make time on the weekends to do that which you have been dying to do. This also applies to things you are worried about. If you’re worried about a particular problem, spend a little tie worrying about it to get it out of your mind.

Procrastinate strategically

Procrastination might seem like the worst productivity killer imaginable, but it can hold some benefits when used strategically. If you do not feel like doing a particular task, there is a task you would be more willing to do and the undesirable task is not urgent, procrastinating on it might actually be a wise choice.

Engage in low-concentration tasks

Part of the reason why you might be procrastinating is that your brain is tired and does not want to do any serious mental lifting at the moment. If there are any tasks that need to be done that do not require a heavy mental exertion, these might be the best tasks to complete at the moment until the brain has time to recharge.

Tackle difficult tasks

Those difficult tasks also need to get done. The best time to take them on is when you feel the most alert and energized. Not only will the tasks get done, but you’ll feel less stressed knowing they’re finished.

Change your tasks when bored

Boredom is a major concentration-killer. One of the major causes of boredom is a lack of variety, which can occur when you are performing the same tasks all the time. If you find yourself slowing down when performing a particular action, consider switching to something else.

Reward yourself

Try to give yourself a reward at the end of the day. This will help your brain remain focused, knowing it will get a treat in the end.

Like your muscles, your brain has limitations and can only operate at full-steam for so long. As amazing a tool as it is, your brain will only reach it’s maximum potential when you learn how to use it effectively.

Maria Burton is one of the coordinators for Focus On Training. Her roles include organising all Prince2 training and also Keeping the company blog up to date. In her spare time Maria loves Reading Crime novels as well as watching horror movies at home with her cat Stella.

Recently I’ve been inspired by our own Patrick Rhone’s new Minimal Mac project, wherein he (and a host of contributors) post about different ways to simplify your Macintosh experience as well as how easy it is to simplify that experience. I’ve taken steps to simplify things on my own Mac, things like eliminating Widgets, menubar icons, Dock icons, and the like.

One thing that has bugged me over the past year or two is the volume of RSS feeds that keeps piling up. If you’re like me, you add more and more feeds to your feed reader (mine is Google Reader). And eventually the volume of feeds gets to be too much. I know some people get as many in one day as I get in one week and are fine with that, so I can’t say there’s a “magic number” for the maximum or minimum number of posts that can be read without it becoming unwieldy. The bottom line is, you have to be aware of your own limits, and know where stress sets in for you.

I know some people go so far as to divide up their RSS Feeds into different categories based on topic. Personally, I divide mine up into six folders:

• 1st Tier: Things I really want to read
• 2nd Tier: Things I want to read, but not as badly as the top tier. Strangely enough, this is the shortest list.
• 3rd Tier: Things I want to read, but not as badly as the previous two.
• people: Friends and family members’ blogs
• personal: blogs I run or otherwise have a stake in
• read when time permits: Stuff I can live without reading, and usually view in list mode, after which I usually hit “Mark all as read” after skimming the headines. Many of these post way more often than I’d like.

As I typically read my feeds about once a week in one one-or two-hour session, I’m thinking about changing how I go about my RSS feed consumption. So, over the past few weeks, I have begun pruning ruthlessly, eliminating items from Google Reader that I know I don’t have much interest in reading anymore. It’s like when you realize you no longer read a particular magazine you subscribe to: you may feel a little sad that you’re parting with a dear old friend, but relieved that you’re letting go of something you no longer really pay attention to, thus freeing up more attention to devote to what you really care about. You lose that “Ugh, one more thing I have to read” mentality when it crosses your mental threshold one more time.

So, in the forums, I have 3 questions for you:

1. What’s your strategy for dealing with RSS feed overload?
2. How often do you review your RSS feeds (if you do that sort of thing), and how long does it take you?
3. Finally, how do you decide when to let those feeds go?

Fire away.

Will work for attention (photo by Stephen Poff)

We’re all easily distracted. I know I am. Seems like everybody I know has multiple irons in the fire. A lot of our various projects may overlap, and everything cries out for attention. But what happens when many things really do warrant your attention? What ends up happening is you try to pay attention to multiple things at once, and not doing a very good job of it, as neither thing will get the amount of attention required to keep it running efficiently and smoothly.

It’s nothing revolutionary, but I think the trick is to only try to focus on ONE thing at a time. Not two, not three, not five. Just one. If something pops into your head that’s unrelated to whatever you’re working on at the moment, make a note of it, capturing it in such a way that you can review it appropriately later at a specified review time. Make that note quickly so you can stay on task.

This is a problem I see all too often in the workplace: our attention is pulled a million directions, and projects and relationships suffer.

That’s right. Don’t forget your attention to your relationships with people: if you give are distracted when someone is talking to you, that person is likely to come to the conclusion that you don’t value their time or what they have to say. If someone ignores me repeatedly, or disregards me or interrupts me, am I going to think they care about what I have to say? Probably not. In return, I’m probably less likely to pay much attention to them. It’s reciprocal.

Remember: until you respect people’s time and attention, you’re not likely to earn much respect — except by bullying. And that’s not “real” respect.

How have you dealt with harnessing your own time and attention to better focus on important projects and — perhaps more importantly — relationships? And what if you were the person being ignored? How did you deal with that? Share over in the forums.