5 ways to stay focused

Staying focused can be extremely difficult with numerous amount of distractions in today's society. With the distractions of social media, television, people, games, etc, it may be hard to accomplish our goals to become successful in life. Being distracted can cause major negative effects in your life that hinder you to reach your goals in life that are vital. This can be a negative domino effect that could potentially ruin your whole life. Just imagine if your goal was to enter one of the top universities in the world for engineering. The requirement to get in the university requires a 3.7 GPA and being involved in numerous amount of activities. Now imagine.. You have a gaming addiction which causes you to lose focus in accomplishing your homework and study time. If this is a daily habit, this could obviously hurt you in the long-term. You could have spent this time studying or doing your homework which would increase your likelihood of achieving a 3.7 or above. Now.. you failed to reach the school of your dreams which could have opened numerous amount of other opportunities for you. Now you may have to choose another university which may be better but unlikely since it doesn't pertain to one of top schools for engineering.

My point is you need to constantly stay focus in order to achieve your dream. 3 hours, 5 hours, or even 5 minutes could hinder you chance for success. You need to be greedy with your time and use every second and minute to feed your focus and goals.

Below, I will share with you five strategies that will help you increase your focus and help you achieve your goals. After I share with you the five tips to increase your focus, I want you to apply those tips and practice. Remember... it will not happen over night, but with practice, you can become really skilled in staying focused.

1. Write down your daily tasks a night before.

Writing down your daily goals or tasks gives you direction on what to accomplish that day. If you have all your goals written down, it will help you with guidance and staying on track. If you force yourself to complete all the tasks, you're more likely to take action and stay focused to complete the list. Do this everyday and make sure you cross out any task you complete. Make sure your goals are reachable. I don't advised writing down a 100 of daily goals and accomplish only 5-10 of them. This will not be a good route to take. Be reasonable in the amount of work you include in your daily tasks so you don't feel too pressured.

2. Split your goals into smaller activities:

Make sure you give yourself workload you can handle. This will decrease your chance of giving up. Giving yourself smaller goals will give you a boost of motivation and feeling of accomplishment for getting things done. A great example is if your task includes completing your homework. Complete a small portion of it every hour. Towards the end of the day, you will have most or all of it completed. Breaking things down in portion will give you less stress and make your task seem a lot easier than it is.

3. Wake Up Earlier:

Most of you may hate, but waking up early can be a great thing. If you wake up earlier, you will take yourself a lot more seriously. Waking up early is a commitment. It shows that you're serious about your goals and improving yourself. Wake up early and try to get as many of your task done as early a possible. This will give you a sense of urgency to get as most done as possible so you can have the rest of the day free to do other things. Overall, you will be a lot more motivated in the morning. Another great benefit of waking up early in the morning is having no distractions. When you're up super early, guess what everyone else is still doing...? This means that you won't get any text messages or any of your friends contacting you through social media. This will make a HUGE difference, I promise!

4. Turn off your phone

Let's face it, PHONES are a huge distraction. Now be honest with yourself... Do you spend more than 5 hours a day on your phone. This includes glancing, texting, looking at social media, etc. Nowadays, more time is spent on your phone than watching television. Being on your phone constantly or glancing at it every five minutes is a huge waste of time and can really hurt you in the long-run. Turn off your phone or keep it far away from you so you're not constantly checking to see if someone is texting, calling, or attempting to communicate with you through social media. I promise, this will make a huge difference and contribute to reaching your goals!

5. Be around focused people

Have you heard of the saying that you are a product of the five closest people you hang with. Well, it's pretty true.. You need to be around hungry and motivated individuals who are always focused and on task. If you're around friends that are constantly working and reaching their goals, what are you most likely going to do? You see where I'm getting at! Make sure you're friends have a good influence on you and are always encouraging and goal-oriented. Don't let certain individuals or friends brainwash you into thinking that distractions are okay when you need to be focusing on your goals!

Overall, please practice and make sure you stay focused. So many individuals have potential to be greater than they are but distractions can destroy your full potential. Make sure you PRACTICE! Practice makes perfect. Don't have the mindset that you either have the ability to stay focused all the time or you don't. This can be practiced and mastered overtime. You won't be the best at first, but once your mind goes through self-training, it will adjust well!

Please comment and share your biggest distraction and what you will do to prevent it from happening