Hi, this is Cyril Peupion from Work Smarter: Live Better
In this video I want to share one simple technique to increase your focus and therefore your performance.
I was the guest speaker recently of the annual Conference of a large Australian Company. The first topic I choose was focus or I would say lack of focus, the fact that in the office today focus has become a big problem. They were a survey done around how often is our concentration broken in the business world.
A lot of people are working now in an open plan and they asked “When you work on something, how often is your concentration broken?” The result was quite amazing: every 3 minutes. Every 3 minutes they is either someone coming and saying, “Cyril, can I grab 2 minutes of your time?” or a phone call or an email that will ping or a noise that would really distract you.
Focus is such an important topic. Focus is such an important thing for key performers. The ability when you are working on something to give 100 percent to it. You need to really try to fight to stay focus.
There a simple technique called the“Pomodoro Technique”. Pomodoro mean tomato in Italian, and it came from a guy called Francisco Cyrillo in the late 80’s. He called it tomato, because he has this little tool in his kitchen. You know the tool that is like a tomato but it’s a timer and when you boil the egg you just put the timer. And, so he use that and he use a technique called pomodoro which means that he would put his timer for 25 minutes and he said for this 25 minutes I am not going to allow myself to be interrupted/distracted, I’m going to give a 100 percent to my topic. And when the little thing rings, then I am going to allow myself 5 minutes to just breeze and do something else and then I’m going to refocus for 25 minutes.
Now find your own timer. What I mean by that is they don’t have to be 25 minutes, 5 minutes. It could be for 15 minutes you focus on something or you decide that it is really important to focus for an hour. Find your timing, but I like this logic of having a little timer and say “Okay, I’m going to completely let myself be absorb and give a 100 percent to something for let say 25 minutes and when it rings then I breeze and do something else.
This is this week Work Smarter: Live Better Tip. I hope you enjoy it.
I’d like to know your advice on how you increase your focus. Any advice you have please leave a little message below and will continue the conversation there.
You have a lovely day and I speak to you soon. Cheers!
