How to Focus Better during Work or Study In 2024?

As we develop more and more flexibility on our working conditions (working hours, working location, dress code…), and tend to grant an important amount of time to our hobbies and personal projects, it becomes essential to learn how to focus on a subject and become efficient.

When faced with complex problems at work, our brains may slowly try to run away from them. This could translate into becoming interested in useless things, like checking our smartphones for new messages or scrolling for new content on social networks.

If you recognize yourself in this situation (or are simply curious about learning new approaches to work), we will share with you some of our favorite tips that do not require too much effort. These small changes will increase your ability to avoid procrastination and distraction, but will also give you insights into how to get into work more easily and make the most of your time during work hours.

Note that we are providing these tips as tools to help you improve your approach to work; they may not apply to everyone, and we believe that you are in the best position to know which of these techniques will work best for you. Keep in mind that it is important to have a work rhythm that is healthy for you, so do not forget to take some breaks.
With the conclusion of this gentle reminder, let’s discuss the importance of creating a positive environment.

Build yourself an environment that you love!

In her notable book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” ¹, Marie Kondo discussed about the importance of working in a room onto a desk that is clean and rid of unnecessary items that could affect our state of mind or obstruct the field of view between us and the computer (or paper).

After getting our room and desk clean, an important matter is to be assured that no one will disturb ourselves during the time when we are focusing on a task. These periods of time dedicated to focusing on work without interruptions are labeled by Cal Newport² as ‘deep work’ sessions.
You may inform colleagues (or family) that you are not reachable during a recurrent period each day (it can be three days a week, just adapt to your situation), and that all questions will be answered once your deep work session is over.

Now that we have some tips to setup an environment suitable for work, let’s see how we can train ourselves to be in ideal mental and physical conditions to achieve what we want.

Put your body and mind in condition!

Emotions have a big impact on our ability to focus on a task.

Robert Plutchik represents emotions as a wheel, containing eight primary emotions: joy, sadness, trust, disgust, fear, anger, surprise and anticipation.
Some research conducted by Harmon-Jones, Price, Gable and Peterson³, shows that positive and negative emotions affects our motivation. Did you know? This research even concluded that anger, that is considered a negative emotion, can be a vector of motivation!
In any case, it is important to be aware of our mental condition, making the necessary effort to solve (or at least bring an answer to) our current problems, allowing ourselves to maintain a peace of mind and a positive mindset that can be translated to work.

One way to put ourselves in a positive mindset is… dressing.

Clothes reveal our identity and the values we hold. Dressing in an outfit that makes us feel good will give us confidence, an underestimated factor that contributes greatly to the achievement of our work. It can be the t-shirt that you recently bought and love, the pullover sewn by your grandmother, or a business suit that you find elegant!

Another key factor in improving our ability to perform manual and cognitive tasks is feeling good in our body.

Do not underestimate sports! Regular exercise is a pillar of mental health; practicing a sport reduces stress and teaches us endurance and discipline. These skills will prove to be a great advantage when focusing on what have to be done.

In situations like working on a computer all day, or working on a personal project (most of the time, a situation where we are the sole guarantor of our work – commonly called “intrinsic motivation”), distraction can prove to be a major problem that result in loss of time and laziness. As you might expect, no perfect solution could apply to anyone, as it depends on the type of distraction and the medical condition of the individual involved (ie. addictions, attention disorder… have a big impact on our ability to focus). That is why, in the next section, we will focus primarily on distraction caused by smartphone, as it is one of the major cause of distraction these recent years, and see how we can limit its usage during working time!

Get rid of screen distractions.

Here is the stat, the average person (16 to 64 years old) spends on screen about 6 hours 37 minutes per day⁴. This behavior increases the difficulty to focus, as it can be pretty hard to get back to a task after interrupting it and may cause our work to be prone to more errors. That is why we recommend disabling all app notifications except calls or SMS exchanges for urgent matters (like family). You may also turn off electronic devices (TV, connected watches…) that could turn out to be a disturbance for you.

Recently, most of the smartphones introduced an exceptionnal feature. It is the ability to activate a focus mode.

This focus mode can restrain the access to apps that we consider distracting. The mode can be switch on and off manually, but it can also be configured to activate only during certain days/hours during the week. Turning it on during working hours can reveal itself a real decrease in distraction as it requires an actual effort to disable the mode! Moreover, it propels us to the control of the aircraft again, as it is now a conscious choice to decide whether we want to continue working or distract yourself from work. We recommend blocking access to all media platforms that can distract us during a working session, including every social network (X, TikTok, Reddit…), online video platforms (Youtube, Netflix…), and news.

How to enable focus mode on iOS and Android.

The focus mode can be setup on Android by going to Android Settings → Digital wellbeing → Focus mode.
On iOS, activate it by going to iOS Settings → Focus.

Studies⁵ suggested that every color has a specific wavelength, and each of these affect our body and brain in a different way. Warmth colors, like red, orange, and yellow, are known for being able to easily attract the eye and draw your attention.
As you may expect, these colors are widely used in our daily used apps in order to keep us interested. You may want to know, is there a way to get rid of this natural attraction phenomenon that keeps me constantly looking at my phone?

This is when ‘Monochrome’ (or ‘Grayscale’) mode enters the field.

Disabling colors of our smartphone, significantly reduce the appeal that videos and images can have on our brain. Checking our smartphone with gray nuances will be flavorless, catchy social media images will look bland, it puts us back in control of our perception senses. Combined with focus mode, these settings makes our smartphone recover its primary use : calling and texting only when needed.

How to enable Monochrome mode on iOS and Android.

The Monochrome mode can be enabled on Android by going to Android Settings → Accessibility → Vision.
On iOS, enable it by going to iOS Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size → turn on Color filters → Grayscale.
It can also be scheduled on Android by using Bedtime mode and enabling Grayscale in customize options, and on iOS by using Shortcuts → Automation.

On the same topic as mobile notifications, reading and answering emails correspond to a primary source of distraction and time loss. In fact, for the average employee, it represents 28% of time loss at work⁶, and a lost in cognitive capabilities when answering mails during a meeting. To avoid this time loss, a technique is to define a fixed timespan (ie. 20mn), each day, during which we are fully devoted to answering emails received the day before.

Now that we have seen how to setup our mind, body, and environment to avoid distractions, you may want to ask: “but when I’m in the middle of a working session, what’s really holding me to do something else like doing the laundry, getting lost in my thoughts … is there some ways to resist to my brain disconnections and stay focus on my task?”.

Stay focus when the urge to do something else arise.

Succumbing to the temptation of doing something else when a problem arise, can make us feel guilty and lead us to blame ourselves (consciously or unconsciously) “I can’t concentrate…” “maybe I’m not qualified enough…” or justify ourselves “It’s ok as long as I have until the end of the week to complete this task, I can be lazy for a minute or two”. In some critical cases, this sense of guilt can lead to stressful situations “how will I accomplish this task before the end of the week?” “what can I do? I don’t want to work on this topic anymore! I have tried everything I could!” and discourage us from finding solutions to make progress on a task. That is why it is important to find ways to avoid disconnecting from our tasks.

A solution that helps keeping our focus on a task is surrounding sound. Being in a calm environment composed of nature sounds or listening to an ambient music that is rather monotone (like the sound of birds, the sound of rain, or music styles without lyrics such as lo-fi, classical music and jazz on a low tempo (60 to 70 BPM)) improves our focus on a task. The constant rythm and the low tempo help our brain create a mental barrier, allowing it to fully concentrate on the current objective!

According to Kelly McGonigal’s willpower instinct theory⁷, resisting an urge by adopting a denial strategy, increases the risk to succumb to other temptations (of any form) later. That it is why we recommend using an awesome technique: the 10 min technique. But you may ask, how does it works?
When a urge occurs, delay it by saying to yourself “If in ten minutes I always want to do it, I will do it.”, then continue working. You will eventually realize that this urge was not necessary, or at least you will consciously make the choice to look away from work (therefore avoiding any form of frustration). Another known solution consist of looking away and blinking eyes repeatedly for a short moment. The usage of breathing techniques (combined with mental imagery and visualization) can also help oxygenize the brain, allowing us to recover the focus necessary to continue.

Earlier, we discussed about the effect of warmth color (red, orange, yellow…) to our brain, how they catch our attention. As you might have guess, colors like blue and green⁸ can also affect our brain in a certain way! But don’t worry, this time it has a positive effect on our ability to work!
From the very beginning of our existence as a human species, our brains have been conditioned to associate these colors with nature. That is why these low wavelength colors are known for offering calm, lowering anxiety, but also for improving focus and efficiency!
Think about it the next time you feel like diverting from your work, take a moment to look outside your window and appreciate nature just as our ancestors used to do.

To sum up, we highlighted that having a clean, disturbance-free environment, and being in a positive mindset, feeling comfortable in our body, are keys to being ready for working on a task.
We established some tips to avoid screen usage as a distraction and discussed ways to resist the urge of being distracted when working during a long length session.
Thank you for reading, let us know if one of these technique had a positive impact on your focus during a working session!

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In the next article, we will talk about the importance of sleeping and how our body is genetically programmed to perform better at particular hours of the day (so you can schedule better the timing of these pauses!).

References:

1. Marie Kondo (2011). “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”.
2. Cal Newport (2016). “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World”.
3. Harmon-Jones, E., Price, T. F., Gable, P. A., & Peterson, C. K. (2014). “Approach motivation and its relationship to positive and negative emotions”.
4. Simon Kemp on DataReportal website (2023). “Digital 2023: Global Overview Report”.
5. Elliot. Andrew J (2015). “Color and Psychological Functioning: A Review of Theoretical and Empirical Work”.
6. Michael Chui, James Manyika, Jacques Bughin, Richard Dobbs, Charles Roxburgh, Hugo Sarrazin, Geoffrey Sands, and Magdalena Westergren (2012). “The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies”.
7. Kelly McGonigal (2012). “The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It”.
8. Lee, K. E., Sargent, L. D., Williams, N. S. G., & Williams, K. J. H. (2018). “Linking green micro-breaks with mood and performance: Mediating roles of coherence and effort”.