Fresh Thinking – Boost Concentration

It’s the end of the newsletter and your attention is flagging. STOP – we have some tips to help boost concentration!

1. Know your triggers. If you are visually orientated a screen might instantly distract you, for others it’s words or music, so solutions like white noise or earphones with no sounds can be essential.
2. It can take 23 minutes to recover from a distraction. Think about having set times in the day to check social media or emails, or make calls to clients, when you have time to action responses and then park them once complete.
3. If you have a really big task try chopping it up into a number of smaller tasks and think about what elements can be delegated to others who can action them, allowing you to concentrate on the parts you do well.
4. Too much to remember and it’s making it hard to concentrate on the here and now? Write it down and move on. Some people find bullet journaling which allows you to write down short and long term goals (that book you always meant to read or that procedure you always meant to learn) makes them more productive.
5. Set some mini goals during the working day (recommend a health plan to ten clients who could benefit today, make an internal referral to the vet nurse mobility clinic at each consulting session). Some people like the ‘Five More’ rule which says that when you are about to give up, try for just five more minutes or you read five more pages.
6. Place cupped hands round your eyes so you have tunnel vision rather than seeing all the distractions around you. You may even have adopted this when studying or reading a textbook. It literally ‘puts the blinkers on’ and can help you refocus and adopt the right mindset.