How to Gain Laser Focus in a World Full of Distractions

Our ability to focus has been reduced dramatically. We’ve never had more distractions to deal with. And as disheartening as it sounds, many of the distractions we face were engineered to be as distracting as possible.

Our brains quickly become addicted to these distractions and our ability to focus on important work suffers.

Learning how to focus is a vital skill if you want to be productive and successful.

Overcome the distractions in your life and get things done with these strategies:

1. Single-tasking beats multitasking. Avoid fooling yourself. You’ll get more done and feel more relaxed if you focus on a single task at a time. It’s not easy for your brain to switch back and forth between different things.

2. Do deep focus activities early in the day. Your ability to focus deeply is greatest in the morning and decreases throughout the day. A few people also do well late at night if their day isn’t too demanding.

3. Practice focusing. You can’t be good at something you don’t practice. It’s harder to focus deeply than you think.

◦ Try setting a timer for 15 minutes and keep your attention entirely on performing a task. Notice how stray thoughts constantly interfere. Notice how strong the urge to check your email, text messages, social media becomes.

4. Remove distractions. Make life easier for yourself by removing as many distractions as possible. Put your phone away. Turn off the TV. Block any websites that you find compelling. Close any computer tabs you don’t need.

5. Learn to be comfortable with being bored. When you’re focused and working, it can also be boring. Most of us choose to distract ourselves because we’re bored. The better you can handle boredom, the easier it is to avoid engaging in those distractions.

6. Plan time for your most common distractions. You don’t have to avoid your favorites distractions 100% of the time. Simply schedule time for those activities after your work has been completed for the day.

7. Get enough sleep. Sleep is important for focus and energy. Your brain needs at least seven hours of sleep to be at its best. Have consistent times for going to bed and waking up.


Life is a never-ending series of distractions. The most successful people are able to focus in spite of distractions. It takes practice to focus intently in the face of other things vying for our attention.

How to Tame Intrusive Thoughts

Do you sometimes feel like your thoughts are beyond your control, and some of them make you uncomfortable? If so, you can relax. Intrusive thoughts are very common and usually harmless.

One study reported by Psychology Today asked volunteers to talk about what goes through their minds.

They found that the average participant had about 500 unintentional thoughts each day, and about 30% were socially unacceptable or downright shocking.

You can learn to feel more at ease even when your mind takes a little dark turn.

Meditating to Tame Intrusive Thoughts:

1. Let go of judgements. Most of your discomfort probably comes from resisting what’s on your mind rather than from the thought itself. With regular practice, mindfulness meditation can train you to observe and accept your thoughts.

2. Focus on your breath. Paying attention to your breath keeps you in the present moment. You learn to distinguish between you and your passing thoughts.

3. Slow down. Most intrusive thoughts last 14 seconds or less. Patiently waiting them out may make them pass even quicker.

Other DIY Methods for Taming Intrusive Thoughts:

1. Avoid suppression. Trying to avoid intrusive thoughts usually backfires. It’s like the famous Harvard experiment that asked subjects to stop thinking about polar bears and wound up making it difficult to think about anything else.

2. Change your expectations. Dreading unwelcome thoughts also reinforces them. Try to view them as a routine part of daily life.

3. Change the script. If you tend to replay unpleasant events, give yourself something more pleasant and productive to think about. Forget about office politics and focus on what to eat for dinner.

4. Stay on task. Do you avoid certain activities because they trigger thoughts you find it difficult to manage? You may be able to free yourself from such limitations by planning more constructive approaches. Develop more compassion for someone you disagree with instead of shutting them out.

5. Try to disengage. Depending on your personality and preferences, you may want to minimize your involvement with involuntary thoughts. Consider them irrelevant and carry on with what you’re doing.

6. Think it through. On the other hand, you may feel more relief when you face things head on. Write your thoughts down or talk them over with someone you trust if you find that helpful and not distressing.

Professional Treatment for Intrusive Thoughts:

1. See your doctor. While involuntary thoughts usually have no significant effects, they may be more troubling for you. That’s especially true if you have certain conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, or depression.

2. Talk with a therapist. Cognitive behavior and other talk therapies can be highly effective for dealing with intrusive thoughts.

3. Take medication. In some cases, your doctor may also recommend medications to manage symptoms on a temporary or longer-term basis. These drugs may include antidepressants such as Anafranil or Prozac.

Intrusive thoughts will probably continue to pop into your head, but you can live more comfortably with them through meditation and other simple techniques.

Related Reading: Comprehensive Self development online guide

8 Tips to Learn More Efficiently

Time, time, time, we all need more time. It’s important to one’s development to learn new knowledge and skills. If you can figure out how to learn more quickly and efficiently, you can either spend the saved time doing something else or use it to raise your level of expertise even higher. Life is too short to be wasting time unnecessarily.

Learning is a popular topic for research at the university level. There’s a lot we know about how to learn more efficiently and effectively.

Learn better and faster with these tips:

1. All learning strategies are just starting points. Each person has their own unique, best way of learning. Experimentation is important. Just as it takes time to find the best diet for your unique body, it can take time to find the best learning strategies for your unique brain.

2. Repeated effort is often the best use of your effort. Most things are better learned in smaller chunks of time. For example, it’s far easier and more effective to prepare for a foreign language vocabulary test by reviewing the words for 5 minutes a few times each day than to study for 2 hours on the day of the test.

3. Understanding can be just as important as memorization. Memorization can be essential but understanding can limit the amount of memorization that needs to be done. Look for the connection between different ideas. Seek to understand what you’re learning.

4. Use multiple sources. Different books, people, and other sources present information in different ways. Each perspective can give you a greater level of understanding. This is also a great tactic to use if you’re confused about something.

5. Working with others can help. This idea works better for some people than others. It’s not unlike the previous tip. Working in a group setting can give you another perspective. It can also be a means to get your questions answered.

6. Maximizing your memory requires practice. You only get better at memorizing things by doing exactly that, memorizing things. Work on your memorization skills each day. Even if you have to create a list of 10 words and see how well you can re-create the list from memory, you’ll be practicing.

7. Create your own notes. Reading a textbook is helpful. Using someone else’s notes can be helpful, too. But nothing is more helpful than your own, unique set of notes. List the most important information and concepts.

◦ Create notes when you read a book that has information you want to learn. If you’re taking a class, rewrite your notes afterwards. If you borrow someone else’s notes, rewrite those, too.

◦ Customize your notes so they work for you and accommodate how you think.


Everything can be done better and faster. Learning is no different. Make the best use of your time by learning intelligently.

Break up your learning and study sessions into reasonable periods of time. Be sure to experiment when applying learning strategies. You’re an individual with unique characteristics.

Related Reading: Comprehensive Self development online guide

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