Cheryl
4 Things You Should be Focusing on Every Day as You Homeschool
Every day our attention is pulled in a million directions. Particularly when you are home schooling, you are thinking about things that need to be accomplished during school, as well as regular household activities such as doing the laundry, and paying bills. To-do lists, both personal and home-school related, family, friends, and even random errands, take up valuable brain real estate. And of course, there is the ever present temptation for social media chatter. It can be challenging to cut through the excess and give your attention to what really matters. Keep reading for the four things that you should be giving some attention to every day.
1. On a Goal
You most likely have at least one goal that you are currently working on. Choose one goal to focus on every day. Focusing on a specific goal every day will allow it to stay in the forefront of your mind and ensure that you spend time working on it. Remember that breaking up big goals into smaller steps will allow you to spread the work over time.
For example, if your goal is to choose a curriculum, break it down into smaller goals. Find the top five you have heard about, thought might work, or which have caught your attention for one reason or another. Then dive into reviews or talking with other home-school moms who have used them. You will either decide one of the five is right for you, or you might start the process again. As mentioned in other posts on this blog, getting to be a part of a local homeschooling association can help speed up the decision process. Moms who are already in the trenches can help you navigate through the process.
2. On the Now
Allowing your mind to dwell on the past is of little use to your current situation. The past is over, and you can’t change it. Focus on what is happening right now in your life, what you need to accomplish, and on the good things you have to reflect on. Keeping your mind present is a better use of your time. Stay focused on what you need to deal with now, today. You really can’t afford to sacrifice and ounce of your time to thinking about the past. Getting through the day, making sure the children stay on track, and also keeping up with the household will take your time, focus, and energy.
3. On the Task at Hand
If there are things that are distracting you from keeping focused on home school related tasks, write down the problems. Look at ways to resolve them. Study solutions on your off hours from school, maybe while the children are in bed. Send them to bed early or let them have a quiet time so you can have a little free time to work through things that might distract you. That way, you can stay focused during school time. Unresolved issues take lots of energy away from focus.
4. On the Positive
Don’t let your mind fall down the tunnel of negativity and what-if thoughts. It’s literally a dead-end road that will take you nowhere. Focusing on the positives of a situation and in general, will do two things. First, it will keep your spirits up when times are tough, and you feel like giving up. Second, positive thoughts manifest more positive thoughts, which in and of itself is motivating.
Honing your thoughts in on specific tasks, aspects of home schooling, and what you want out of it for you and your children is a process that takes time to work on. Your mind, like any muscle, works best when you train it regularly. Focusing on the items listed above daily will help train your brain to go to those items on its own, eventually turning you into a lean, mean, focusing machine.
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9 Things You Should Be Eating For Better Focus
Food and the nutrients they provide are the building blocks of our bodies and minds. Properly fueling your body is the perfect way to make sure your mind is ready to take on the day.
- Blueberries
Eating these tasty berries will not turn you into Violet Beauregarde, thankfully. But studies have shown that blueberries do contain antioxidants that can boost memory and improve focus for hours after eating them.
- Green Tea
Sipping this delicious beverage will give you a boost of caffeine and L-Theanine. When caffeine and L-Theanine are combined, they work together to improve alertness and focus without the dreaded crash that typically comes a few hours later.
- Avocados
It’s no wonder social media influencers are preaching the benefits of avocados. Filled with good fats and fiber, they enhance blood flow. Better blood flow means a healthier and happier brain.
- Leafy Green Vegetables
Antioxidants, carotenoids, and B-vitamins. All of these individually and combined help with memory and focus, as well as protecting your brain and giving it the nutrients it needs to replenish after a long day of work.
- Fatty Fish
Consuming a serving of fatty fish, such as salmon, trout, or sardines, has been shown to increase memory, mental performance, and lessen issues such as mood swings and fatigue. This is all thanks to omega-3 fatty acids, something that is abundant in several types of fish.
- Water
Your entire body is made up of water, and it is no surprise that it depends on it. Drinking enough water daily can aid in memory, focus, and creativity. Be sure to find your happy range of daily water intake.
- Dark Chocolate
Before you get carried away, it only takes a small serving of dark chocolate daily to reap the benefits. Caffeine and magnesium combine in this decadent treat to stimulate your brain and release the feel-good hormones, endorphins and serotonin. Both give you energy, focus, and a positive mood.
- Flax Seed
These tiny seeds are filled with goodness such as magnesium, B-vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids, and even fiber. Grinding the seeds gives your body the ability to digest them fully and to benefit from the mental clarity and focus that comes from them.
- Nuts
Nuts also contain a number of health benefits. Protein, vitamin E, and amino acids are packed into a one-ounce serving, giving you less cognitive decline and better focus throughout your day. Choose raw nuts over fried and salted. Raw nuts are better for you.
Filling your diet with benefit-packing foods can sometimes seem complicated, with the newest superfood changing daily. However, small additions of these 9 foods can allow you to reap the benefits of small changes.
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5 Tricks to Regain Lost Focus
It happens to everyone at some point. You’re moving along, zipping through your to-dos at work or at home, and then BOOM. Something happens around you, and your focus and productivity train is derailed. It can be tricky to find your footing and get back into your groove. However, six tricks can minimize the chance of derailment and help you to get back on track after losing focus.
1. Silence Your Phone (and computer)
We are all guilty of it. Every time your phone rings, vibrates, or lights up, you automatically look away from your task to glance at your phone. Stop those notifications, silence your phone, or put it out of your line of vision (in a desk drawer or up on a shelf).
2. Close Your Door
If your office is in a high traffic area, consider closing your door for a few hours a day so you can work through your more complicated tasks. This will eliminate the distractions of people walking by, sticking their heads in, and may make others think twice before knocking. This will give you more uninterrupted time to work.
3. Take Breaks
Taking breaks probably seems counterintuitive. However, taking breaks from work can give your mind a rest too. Also, if you know you have a ten-minute break coming up, it will provide you with an incentive to push through a laborious task.
4. STOP Multitasking
There is no way around this, but multitasking is killing your productivity and your focus. Multitasking means you are splitting your attention between multiple items, which means you are not giving anything your full attention. Stop it. Focus on one task at a time. The exception is a task that you can do when you are waiting for something to come back online. For example, if you are waiting on hold on a phone, you might be tidying up the kitchen. In general, multi-tasking is not a good ideas, but there may be a few times you can use it judiciously to your advantage.
5. Remove Internal Distractions
Internal distractions are the little ideas, to-dos, and random thoughts that pop into your head while working on a different task. When this happens, take a moment to write down that thought/to-do, and then get back to work. Writing it down will allow your brain to let go of it while you get back to work, and you can revisit it later. Later on as you review the list you may find that some of the things you thought were urgent aren’t that important any more.
Regaining lost focus doesn’t have to be a carnival trick. With practice and the correct tools in place, you can restore your focus quickly and with little downtime.
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5 Tips To Eliminate Distractions To Gain Better Focus
Distractions come in all shapes and sizes and can ruin even the best laid of plans and intentions. Some distractions cannot be helped or ignored (fire alarms or crying babies), but many of our daily interruptions can be. Keep reading for five simple steps to minimizing and eliminating disturbances that are keeping you from focusing on what matters most.
- Turn Off Notifications
We love notifications. From our phone, from our computers, from everything. Turn them off. You do not need to know every time you get a like or a retweet. You can also turn off notifications from other apps (health, email, news, coupons), and do the same with notifications that come from your computer for emails and ads. This will significantly lower the number of distractions you will have throughout a day.
- Put Away Your Phone
If at all possible, put your phone on silent or away for a set amount of time. You will no longer be tempted to check-in needlessly every few moments, and when it does go off, you won’t know it. The vast majority of messages received throughout the day do not need immediate responses anyways. If you still worry about missing important calls or texts, change your settings to allow messages and calls from specific people.
- Only Necessary Programs
If you are working on your computer, be sure only to have open the programs that are necessary for your project. Are you working on a spreadsheet? Close your email and internet browser. Closing the unneeded programs will limit distractions and having the programs you need already opened will save you time and energy.
- Clear All the Clutter
Clutter comes in many forms. Physical clutter on your desk, visual clutter (notes stuck to your monitors), or mental clutter. Get everything put up, cleaned up, and out of your head so you can focus on your task at hand and not worry about distractions.
- Prepare Your Needs
Preparing your needs is about setting up your environment. Make sure your room is the right temperature or that you have a blanket if you tend to get cold. Make sure you have a beverage, a snack, and any other tools or supplies you will need. Having everything ready means you will not be leaving your work area frequently where you can get distracted and wander off.
Taking a few moments to prepare yourself and your work area can go a long way in helping you to maintain focus and complete projects promptly. Looking around your area, what steps can you take now to eliminate distractions?
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5 Things You Should Be Doing To Improve Focus At Work
Are you someone that skips from task to task at work without spending a significant amount of time on any one thing? You probably are if you’re reading this article… but that’s okay, you’re here now, and we are going to work on it. Keep reading to learn the 5 things you should be doing at work to improve your focus and productivity.
- Respond, Don’t React
Immediate reaction is something we all feel like we have to do. New email? Read, react, and hit send. New to-do pops up on your project management system? Do it immediately. STOP. First, unless something is marked “Immediate Action Needed,” it can probably wait. Stop reacting immediately and instead take time to work through, think, and respond when you’re ready.
- Hardest First
Get the toughest (or most boring) tasks done first thing in the morning. This will get it out of the way so you can enjoy the rest of your day, and it will stop you from procrastinating to avoid that unbearable task.
- Stop Time-Sucks
Time-sucks come in many forms. Notifications, social media, and cleaning out your deleted email files are great examples. You are giving up your valuable time to those things that can wait, and instead, most likely creating a backlog of work for yourself. Do whatever it is you need to do to remove the temptation and get back to work. Sometimes something like deleting emails can be multi-tasked at a different time, for example, when you are on hold waiting to talk to someone on the phone. Think about some time wasters and when you can multi-task them in. Another thing that can be done is set up folders for incoming emails. For example, you probably get notifications when you pay bills. By making folders, or labels as they are sometime called, in the email provider, you can automatically or semi-automatically send emails to your folders. This will save you time.
- Make a To-Do List
A game plan for your day is possibly the most valuable tool you have at your disposal. Simply knowing what all you need to do and what other commitments you have will give you a clear view of what your day will look like. A simple piece of paper with a time ladder and checkboxes will do the trick.
- Work in Chunks
Break your day up into chunks by time. Working for forty-five minutes with a ten-minute break will not only make the day go by faster but will also help you learn to gauge how long specific tasks take and where your time is being used.
Improving your focus at work is about more than exercising your brain to be more productive. It’s also about training yourself to work, respond, and plan your day in a way that is most useful to you. This will look different for everyone, but with time and practice, you can become an effective worker.
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