Everyone has a task that’s the Achilles’ heel of their focus. It never fails that every time the task comes up, they get distracted. This particular task can be different for each person and can cause them to lose focus for a number of different reasons.
It might be that you reach a point where it’s time to edit your work. You hate editing things, and so this is a task that you wish to avoid. Maybe you want to avoid it because editing makes you second-guess yourself.
Or it could be that while creating the project was fun, editing is more difficult. That’s because this is something that’s not creative. If you’re a writer, editing is the business side of work and feels like something that’s being used to alter your creativity.
Editing is hard work, no matter what field you’re in. You may not want to edit your creative endeavors because you feel that every time you do, you find mistakes or it makes you feel like you’re less accomplished than what you actually are.
Because you question your abilities during this process, you don’t want anything to do with it, so you get distracted. This is a distraction on purpose, even though you might not consciously realize it.
Whenever the task comes up, you enable these distractions. You turn to social media and you scroll through the feeds. Before you know it, this distraction has taken away your desire to finish the project.
You might allow a distraction like an online game. You decide that you’ll play a game or two and it turns into several. The next thing you know, the work day has ended and you’re going to have to work on the task tomorrow.
This only acerbates the inability to remain focused on the task or project. Sometimes people use “good” distractions to stop focusing on a task. You might have to respond to emails so you stop working to go answer emails.
You tell yourself you’re doing something that you have to do. While that might be true, you don’t have to do it right that minute. You could wait until the task or whatever step you’re working on is complete first.
Some people distract themselves with food. When they reach the part they don’t want to do, it’s snack time. The key to breaking the habit of allowing any task to steal your focus is to recognize that this is something you do.
Once you realize this, you can take steps to fix it. One step might be by outsourcing the task at that point. Or it could be that you need to change the amount of time you focus. Instead of trying to work straight through, work using shorter bursts of time.
This way, you don’t have to focus for long in one sitting. You can break up the time and that can help to retain your focus even when you don’t like what you’re doing.
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