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September 23, 2009

When You Can’t Focus

It is a simple fact that you can’t always work at one-hundred percent. You might be the most dedicated project manager in the world, but there are still days when your brain goes into shutdown mode and your eyes seem to slide away from anything you try to tackle. How can you still contribute to the project when it feels like you can’t focus? In this post we look at tasks you can execute when focusing is not an option and we offer some ideas on how to get re-focused.

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Break Up Tasks

This is the simplest strategy to tackle the problem preventing your focus. Often an inability to focus is based on not knowing how to proceed. You don’t know where to start and therefore you don’t want to. Breaking a hulking, awkward task into a list of easily achievable steps is a powerful productivity tactic, and often reveals the true problem that your subconscious was shying away from: that very first action item.

Clearing Your Inbox

Starting from the oldest item, go through your physical inbox and archive, delegate, reply, delete or add any action items you find into your trusted system. A cleared inbox can produce peace of mind and can dramatically reduce the stressful effects of the “swamped feeling” that may be the cause of your distraction.

Regular sweeps of your inbox also can help keep you on top of your responsibilities and reduces the risk of missing an important piece of communication. When starting to process your emails, use folders and labels to move all but your most recent communications out of the inbox or every time you open the email client, it will feel like a thousand-and-one tasks are waiting for you.

Research

If you have an upcoming project or a new purchase on the horizon, relevant research can be the perfect task for when you can’t focus at the moment. The earlier you learn about something, the more time you have to assimilate that information before having to act on it. Researching markets, products, markets or even new project management methodologies is a low stress and sometimes useful way to use your time, keeping you on top of long term projects – and it’s often achieved by surfing the Internet, so it’s what you were going to do anyway, but now it’s useful.

Organize Your Work Area

The state of your desk has been shown to affect your productivity and attitude throughout the day. Every moment wasted hunting for that piece of paper you need is another moment wasted (and another reason you should be using proper project tools instead of sticky-notes anyway). The act of simply straightening up your work area (here are a few handy hints) provides the advantage of having something done, making all future work easier and serving as the small “mental break” that might make it possible to focus again.

Ways to Stay Focused

There may be useful things to do when your brain says “bye-bye” and seems to squeeze out of your ear, but prevention is better than a cure and there are many project tools which can help you stay on track. Especially when you’re involved in a group collaboration environment and any delays on your end will affect everyone else involved. Here we look at some task management tools which can help you stay focused even when you’d rather not:

To Do Lists

Lists are quite possibly the single best productivity tool ever invented. Everything from coconut cake recipes to lunar module launch procedures come in list form, and they form the basis of entire project management strategies. The reason is that the human mind is great at doing one thing at a time, but not so great at organizing everything – so if you make the first “one thing” to do be, “making a list”, all you have to do is execute that list you created and you’re usually done.

With task management tools, combined with robust filtering capabilities, you can quickly produce dynamic “To Do” lists drawn from a set of projects according to specified input conditions, reducing the complex problem of task management to creating a simple list and executing.

Intelligent Reporting

A picture is worth a thousand words, especially when those words deal with web-based project management and can include collaboration with other companies, other countries and multiple projects. Powerful reporting tools can reduce the most complex data into a simple set of useful images, allowing you to see at a glance what your current priorities are – and, if necessary, motivate you with just how urgent they now are.

A Central Resource

Modern computers can connect you to everyone and everything, and that’s not always a good thing. Group collaboration software puts all the project tools and task management information you could ever want at your fingertips, but sometimes you’re just looking for one message from a collaborator, then you get distracted by something else you saw, then you’re clicked through to a website, and the next thing you know it’s two hours later and you haven’t gotten anything done.

Instead of relying on email for collaborative project management, use a system that gathers everything on any subject into a single, easily-accessible central location, so you’re not automatically generating distractions for yourself when you look for information. With all the information you need in one place, you can stay focused on solving problems versus searching multiple systems for information.

How Do You Stay Focused?

And now we need you to focus on providing us with your tips and tricks. :) How do you stay focused in the face of a fire hose spray of interruptions? Do you have a hiding place where you can get into the “zone”? Are there tools that you just can’t live without? Share your thoughts with us by commenting below or collaborate with us on our Facebook page or on Twitter.


—  Qtask team @ 9:40 am