Last week, we kicked off the month with a few tips and tricks to improve focus at work. Here are a few more tips to improve concentration and help us become our best possible version at work.

• Try some caffeine

I love that internet meme that says: “But first, Coffee” It kind of summarizes the start of my day. Most of us need that caffeine kick to jump start our day and help inject a little personality into ourselves. Otherwise, we’d be a bunch of zombies trying to start work in hopeless need of brains.

But more kickstarting our day coffee can do so much more. Did you know that caffeine can improve mental focus and increase concentration. It’s like a shot of adrenalin. It gives you a quick boost of extra energy. The key (as with everything else in life) is moderation. With coffee, DOSE is important. Bet you didn’t know that the less caffeine you consume, the better it works? Your rain receptors respond normally to caffeine – the more you drink it, the more your body gets used to it. The effect gets less overtime. This is call attenuation. Economists will understand this as diminishing returns. So, save caffeine for when you need it. And remember that everything you take too much of has a negative effect.

• Take breaks

Ok listen. Let’s get one thing clear. You are NOT too busy to take breaks. Nobody is too busy to take breaks. I sometimes find myself wondering why some people think that being constantly busy is an awesome sign that they are being productive. I think the opposite is true. If you don’t have time to take breaks, then you are not being efficient aren’t you? Breaks are meant to super charge us and revitalize us. It gives us second wind and gives us time to recalibrate our focus.

Scientific research actually backs this up. It’s a universal truth that if you spend a long time doing the same task, chances are, you begin to lose your focus after a while. It’s like when you focus your attention on a stationary object and everything else disappears from view, taking breaks allows us to stay focused on things that need our full attention.

• Keep work at work

Keeping work at work can be quite a problem for those who work from home. Office workers can always train themselves to NOT take any work home (unless absolutely necessary) but when you work from HOME, you have no choice in the matter. However there are ways to psychologically condition yourself. First is to have a home office. I understand that we can’t all have that perfect home office…or a spare room for that matter to use as a home office. But if you can carve out a designated area in your home to use as a home office, then you can get into the mindset that work stays at work. Yo can boost your productivity further by keeping that area uncluttered.

• Train your brain

Some of us play games during our breaks to keep ourselves entertained. While Pokemon Go is a great option, why not use this downtime to improve your focus. Games like CogniFit, Elevate, Lumosity, Mindnode, and Brain Traning: Focus are just some mobile apps that can help you improve your focus while having fun. These apps are available in iOS and Google Play.

I hope you find these tips useful. If you have some tips for us, we’d love for you to share them in the comments. As always, remember to: Stay Humble, Hustle Hard. Good luck!

Written by Jaie O.- The Help

Happy Labor Day weekend everyone! September is a celebration of the many invaluable contributions that workers have made to the growth of companies, industries, and countries. Not only do we work for our families, but our work contributes to company growth, and in a much larger scale, industry growth and nation building. So to honor the hardworking employees and workers, we’ll kick off this month with the first article of a series of Ways to Stay Focused. Here are the first few tips:

• Minimize multitasking

Minimize multitasking or stop altogether! You think you’re being more productive by juggling multiple tasks at the same time but really, you’re NOT. A study published in Psychology today says that you lose up to 40% of your productivity by multitasking. That’s because you are not really multitasking but switching from task to task. In the time it takes to switch from one task to another is really what eats through your productive hours.

Here’s the deal, psychology research shows that people can only focus on one cognitive task at a time. This means you can only focus on one mental activity at a time. If it involves brain work, you can’t juggle two things at once. So focus your brain power on your most important task to  stimulate your brain. The rest will be easy peasy.

• Meditate

Now is the time to learn how to meditate. If you haven’t started yet, you can read about it here. Try to incorporate meditation breaks into your workday. There are many benefits to it and you’ll feel less overwhelmed. Taking meditation breaks improves our memory retention, increases our focus, reduces our stress levels and stabilizes our emotional responses, gives our brain true rest, and improves our brain power.

• Exercise regularly

Ah, the many benefits of exercise! It not only improves how you look and feel physically but also does wonders to improve your concentration. Chemicals get released into our brain that improve its retention and focus capacity. A study conducted at the University of Illinois shows evidence that students who exercise moderately before taking a test that measured attention spans performed better than students who didn’t exercise. What happens is this: exercise primarily helps improve focus by improving our brain’s ability to ignore distractions. In this era of a thousand and one social media platforms and digital distractions, that super power is very valuable.

• Make a to-do list

No office worker can live without a To-Do list. So I’m sure you don’t need a lecture on the merits of keeping a To-Do list to keep yourself focused on what need to get done by the end of the day. But you can incorporate Productivity Boosting Techniques to your list making in order to supercharge your productivity I’ve written about some techniques previously. Try the different techniques discussed last month like the GTD method, Eat the Frog, and The Action method.

There you have it! Some tips to improve your focus at work. Stay tuned for more tips. If you have some tips on staying focused at work, we’d love to hear about them in the comments? As always, remember to: Stay Humble, Hustle Hard. Good luck!

Written by Jaie O.- The Help

This month’s post all have one common denominator. They all focus on Productivity Boosting Techniques that help teach us refine our work habits and employ techniques to help us work more efficiently. So far, I’ve discussed the benefits of decluttering your workspace, using the Get Things Done or GTD method, the very fun, time based Pomodoro Technique, and the quirkily named Eat the Frog method of boosting productivity. For the last post in our Productivity Boosting Techniques for this month, I’ll talk about how sometimes, the best tricks are the most simple ones.

I know that by now we all have our routines and personal techniques of organizing tasks and keeping on top of work. We start the week with a concrete plan and a list of what we should be working on for each day. But as the week progresses, ad hoc tasks tend to creep in. Sometimes, we find ourselves with work piled up. This is when the amount of work gets too overwhelming. We tend to lose our focus and resort to just “winging it.” This means that,  somewhere along the way (and in between that pile of work), we tend to miss deadlines or miss important tasks. We may feel that the only way to get ourselves out of the funk is to clear out all the work and start at the beginning to get ourselves re-organized.

Sometimes, going back to basic is the best way to address overwhelming tasks in order to regain focus. And that’s just what the Action method teaches us. In the book “Making Ideas Happen” by Scott Belsky, he teaches us that the best methods for managing projects are simple and easy to perform. The idea behind the Action method is to break down a project into simple, intuitive components.

Ready to know how it works? Here’s what you need to do:

The Action method operates on one simple premise: that everything is a project. That monthly report you are working on is a project, so is organizing your kitchen. Once you get the hang of thinking that everything is a project, you can start identifying and breaking it down into it’s basic components. Then, all you have to do is to imagine these components as items that you can place into “buckets”.

The next step is to organize these components into the following buckets:

1. Action Steps: Action Steps are precise and explicit tasks that help you make progress towards completing the project. They are concrete, actionable items: things that you can do something about immediately or within a specific time-frame. Take the kitchen organizing example: organizing the kitchen pantry, clearing out the cabinets under the sink, and cleaning the countertops are all examples of action steps.
2. References: This is a list of any project related info or resources that you need to get tasks done. They could be sketches, manuals, notes, website links or anything that are readily accessible for you to refer to in relation to your project.
3. Backburners: backburner items are things that don’t need to be done right away. They are things that you don’t have to action immediately but would have to be cleared out of the queue someday. In short, they are low priority tasks. In our kitchen organizing example, it could be: buy more bins, replace countertop with marble, or replace kitchen fixtures.

With this, I conclude our Productivity Boosting Techniques series for the month. I’d love to know which productivity boosting technique is your favorite. Let me know what works for you! As usual remember to: Stay Humble, Hustle Hard. Good luck!

Written by Jaie O.- The Help

I’ve been writing a series about Productivity Boosting techniques this month. So far, we have talked about decluttering your workspace to get in the zone, the Get Things Done method of organizing all your tasks in one place, and the very fun Pomodoro Technique that has it’s origins in a tomato shaped kitchen timer. This week, I’ll tell you about another fun productivity boosting method that involves Mark Twain and frogs. Keep reading…

A famous quote from the brilliant Mark Twain goes like this: “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” He then goes on to say: “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

What Mark Twain is saying is this: if you’re looking at an ugly, unpleasant, and somewhat metaphorically slimey task, it is best to get that done first. Get the hardest task done first!

Pretty straightforward advice, don’t you think? However, if you’re like the rest of us normal people, we tend to put off the most unpleasant task for last. We have a very human tendency to keep skirting around these ugly tasks wishing that they eventually go away or (deviously) hoping that somebody picks them up.

Listen, that is never going to happen. Nobody else will pick up the slack for you, much less do the tasks that are hard and unpleasant for you. And if you work from home, there will be nobody else to do it anyway.

So you better eat the frog! The theory behind this is for you to get the hardest, most unpleasant task over and done with first thing in the day – and the rest of your day will be smooth sailing. This productivity method was developed by Brian Tracey and he has written about it here. This method has only 3 steps to it, yet it could possibly be the hardest one to follow and execute. Here’s how it works:

1. At the end of your workday, make a list of everything you need to accomplish the next day – If you’re in the habit of list making, this won’t come as a problem for you. Just write down everything you have to do for the next day and you’re good to go.
2. Identify your frog (or frogs) and put them on the top of the list – Let’s face it. You have that one looming task you always tend to put off for another day.  Maybe because it looks hard, or overwhelming, or maybe so much detail goes into it’s completion, or it’s just plain unpleasant. There’s that one task that gives you anxiety because, well, you just don’t want to do it. This task is your proverbial frog. It is apprehensive and you waste so much time and energy avoiding it.
3. In the morning, eat that frog – That’s it! Eat the proverbial frog and get over your most daunting task first thing in the morning. That will free you up for the rest of the day. And when I say free, you can literally let out a sigh of relief that you have gotten over the task that you didn’t want to do. You are now free of anxiety. You are now free to focus on other tasks that also require your attention. You are now free of spending unnecessary amounts of energy fussing over how to tackle that frog.

Go ahead and try it. Do the hardest task first and get it off your plate. Now, don’t you feel so much better? Take a break. Enjoy that warm, delicious, cup of coffee. You deserve it.  As always, remember to: Stay Humble, Hustle Hard. Good luck!

Written by Jaie O.- The Help

The next few article in this series are all about Productivity Boosting Techniques. I have discussed a few like how decluttering gets you in the zone and the GTD or Get Things Done method of organizing all your tasks in one place. Here’s a fun productivity boosting technique that kind of involves…pasta!

Curious? Read on.

According to wikipedia “The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. These intervals are named pomodoros, the plural in English of the Italian word pomodoro (tomato), after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer that Cirillo used as a university student. The method is based on the idea that frequent breaks can improve mental agility.”

A pomodoro is a sauce made from tomatoes which is typically served with pasta. Making the sauce involves a pomodoro kitchen timer. In this method, Francesco Cirillo used a pomodoro kitchen timer to develop the Pomodoro Technique. In this technique, one pomodoro is equal to the time interval spent working on a task. The main objective is to create a time period of intense focus and reduce procrastination.

Here’s how it is done:

1. Pick a task that requires your full undivided attention. – I know, I know. ALL of them require your undivided attention. But just pick one for now, ok?
2. Set a timer – The usual timeframe is for 25 minutes. That equals one pomodoro. You  set the timeframe needed for the task, so adjust accordingly. The timeframes can vary from 20 to 40 mins: more than that and you risk burning out. So aim to set short periods of time but work with intense concentration. The timer doesn’t have to be a tomato shaped kitchen timer. It could be any timer on your phone, on your watch, or you could use the pomodoro timer online here. There are also phone apps available.
3. Work on the task until the timer rings. – In a tracker, put a checkmark or anything that denotes that you have completed one pomodoro or one 25 minute interval
4. Take a 5 minute break – This is very important. Stop  what you’re doing when the timer rings. The break is meant to recharge you and reduce fatigue or burnout. So stretch, grab some coffee, get a snack, walk around. Take a break.
5. Set the timer again – Set the timer to one pomodoro. Like I’ve said earlier, you determine the length of one pomodoro. In this example, our pomodoro equals 25 minutes.
6. When you complete 4 intervals or have 4 checkmarks, take a longer break (Usually 15 to 30 mins) – Again, breaks are important. The longer break is meant to add to your sense of accomplishment. Usually, tasks are finished by this time.
7. Depending on how much more work is left, you can either repeat until you finish the task or move on to the next task.

I must confess, this is my favorite productivity boosting method. You can get into a zone of uninterrupted work and every break feels like a reward. It feels good to chip off blocks of work one pomodoro at a time. There are apps available in iOs and Google play for your phone, if you wish to try this method out.

Have you tried this technique out before? How did it work out? Share your experience with us in the comments! As always, remember to: Stay Humble, Hustle Hard.

Written by Jaie O.- The Help