Many employees sit in meetings or constantly answer customer enquiries by email. They have to squeeze in core tasks with great effort. As a result, they become unproductive and unhappy. Those who can improve their concentration achieve more, make hardly any mistakes and deliver better results. It is also a sign of mental strength.
Table of contents:
2. Seven reasons why you lose concentration at work
3. Improving concentration - what you can do to boost your concentration in the office
4. Focused working with the right chair
5. Conclusion: concentration in the office
Focused working in the office – why doesn’t it work?
Do you find it hard to concentrate at work? Do you sit at your desk, look around and wish you could just escape back home? Your workspace is overflowing, countless unanswered emails are waiting for you, the phone is constantly ringing and your colleagues’ laughter keeps throwing you off track. On top of that, you painfully catch yourself slumping into an uncomfortable sitting position because management has so far placed no importance on ergonomic working conditions.
In this article, you will learn how to improve your concentration at work and tackle your mountain of tasks with ease and full focus. You will understand why so many employees find it difficult to maintain concentration in the office. You will use your motivation to enjoy your work. You will also realise that you do not have to work through 12 hours straight, but can finish on time at the end of the day. Focused working and breaks go hand in hand. Before long, you will appreciate those short pauses in between.
Seven reasons why you lose concentration at work
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Emails, chat messages, customer calls. You start with lots of energy, but achieve little in the end. You may be taking on too much work at once. Office concentration gone.
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You keep your own smartphone within easy reach. This causes unconscious distraction and reduces concentration at work.
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A lot of noise in the office. Sounds such as the ringing phone, colleagues talking, keyboard tapping or the ticking of the clock make it impossible for you to work with focus.
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Personal worries have a major impact on concentration.
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Lack of sleep, too little water, heavy meals during your lunch break.
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Your own inner attitude, little desire, no enjoyment in the task, no motivation
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Poor workplace quality: Uncomfortable Office chair and non-ergonomic office furniture mean one thing: focused work is impossible
Improve concentration - What you can do to boost your concentration in the office
You can improve your concentration by organising your workload effectively. Deal with urgent tasks first and keep your smartphone in your bag. You will quickly notice that you can focus much better. You can also use headphones to block out conversations between colleagues that are not relevant to you. Please let all staff know that you do not wish to be disturbed, so they only approach you in truly urgent cases. During your lunch break, you should make sure your meal contains only a small amount of carbohydrates.
To make focused work possible, it is important to pay attention to your diet and drink enough water. Another factor that helps concentration is sleep. However, if you take a nap while working, you may risk dismissal. Even so, make sure you get restful sleep, because your well-being at work does not just benefit you. Colleagues, customers and everyone around you can usually tell whether you are feeling well or not.
Working with greater focus can be learned: working memory and attention have a huge influence on our ability to concentrate. When we are stuck in a mental block, we no longer pay attention to important things and can barely remember anything. In concrete terms, this means that with working memory, we can only retain information for a short time. Our attention determines what we focus on and what we ignore instead. The good thing is that everyone can train both. You can easily train your attention by consciously following your breathing in and out. Meditation is also very well suited to learning how to direct your attention.
The Pomodoro technique, on the other hand, boosts our working memory. You work for a full 25 minutes and then take a five-minute break, which helps you work with greater focus. It is best to set a timer for both the 25-minute work session and the five-minute breaks. The real secret is the breaks, which help you concentrate better. During this short rest period, the brain can process new information and link it with what is already there. You will increasingly notice that you can concentrate much better after the breaks. Give yourself time to get used to this new way of working and practise the 25/5-minute rhythm.
Work with greater focus: Another unusual but highly effective method for staying focused and performing well at the office is to work for just ten minutes, then deliberately stop in the middle and take a short one-minute break. It is important that you enjoy the task in order to feel the effect.
Why is that? It is based on the psychologically powerful Zeigarnik effect: At the beginning of the 20th century, Bluma Zeigarnik studied Gestalt psychology at the University of Berlin and worked under the psychologist Kurt Lewin. In the course of her work, she developed an experiment in which the participants were divided into two different groups. In the first group, she interrupted the participants while they were working on the task. The participants in the other group were allowed to finish it. Bluma Zeigarnik's results show that we find it easier to remember tasks we were unable to complete. By contrast, memories of tasks we have completed were very limited.
This fascinating effect can be explained as follows: Tasks we have started create a certain tension in our brain. This tension allows us to access these tasks very easily because they remain present. However, as soon as you complete a task, this tension immediately drops and after just a few minutes you can no longer remember it as quickly. You have to dig deep into your thoughts to recall the process or the result of the task. But as soon as you are forced to interrupt a task, our brain prevents this release of tension and you have immediate access to it. And not only that. You automatically focus more on the task as soon as you return to it after the short break.
Focused working with the right chair
The last important point has to do with your health in the workplace to do. All the tips mentioned above will be of little use if the furniture in your office is not ergonomically designed. In other words, you can only perform well and work with focus in the office when you feel comfortable. For example, if you are sitting comfortably and the monitor is at eye level, this can immediately boost your concentration.
Conclusion
Saying “I can't work with focus” holds back the power you have inside you. With patience and practice, you can easily increase your concentration. And it gets a little easier every day.