Do you Lack the Focus Necessary to Build Your Blog or Business?

If you are like me, you struggle with focus every. single. day.

You are overwhelmed with responsibilities and the struggle to balance career, family, and a blossoming online business or blog is real.

It’s insanity.

I get it. I really do. Because I live it too.

And that’s an important distinction to make.

It’s incredibly important for you to recognize that you are not struggling by yourself. Most people building a blog or trying to launch an online business are struggling just like you. #truth

If you are easily distracted, or just have an ever-expanding to-do list, this post will provide you ways to find the focus necessary to dominate your day and start to move your business in the right direction.

10 Ways You Can Amplify Your Focus and Kick Ass With Your Blog or Business

Here are 10 quick ways you can start to wrangle your focus away from the grips of chaos.

These will help you regain your balance and approach your day with a succint set of strategies that will help you kick ass and take names.

Let’s get it.

1.  Keep Things Directly In Front of You

Don’t worry about next quarter. Hell, don’t worry about next month.

If you are going to start to gain control and increase your daily focus, you have to stop obsessing with items way down the timeline.

Be attentive to the items/tasks directly in front of you and start to knock them out.

Keep everything on Google Calendar or a similar tool and look at the day immediately in front of you. By keeping a short viewpoint you can dedicate the effort necessary to accomplish your immediate needs.

Click Here to Download the Free Weekly Planning Template

2. Organize Your Projects and Prioritize

If you are like me you have 46 projects you want to start. I maintain an entire folder in Evernote with all of my ideas and future projects.

I buy domains like most people buy milk.

But I can’t implement them all and neither can you. Even though you are Superman or Superwoman, you can’t do it all.

You need to start to look at your projects and identify and prioritize those that need your attention first.

Which projects are you most passionate about? Which ones do you want to do?

Pursue those.

Turn your focus on that one project and start to make real progress. Your list of 45 other things will still be there after you finish.

3. Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew

You have to manage your workload.

If you are a podcaster, don’t try to start multiple shows at one time. If you are a blogger, don’t try to post every day.

Not only will you lose focus but you’ll probably also burn out much quicker.

You need to be diligent with how you approach your work so your focus isn’t diluted across projects or saturated within one project.

Regulate the amount of work you do. Try different tactics and see what works with your work/life balance then continue that strategy moving forward.

4. Keep a Schedule You Can Maintain

Once you’ve determined what your sweet spot is for content creation, start a schedule and stick to it.

Blog once a week on the same day so your audience comes to expect new content. Podcast once a week on the same day so you develop a habit and your audience can come to rely on your latest brilliance.

Be consistent with your content but make sure you fit it into your schedule in a way that makes you productive in all facets of life.

When you settle on your publishing schedule don’t forget to understand your marketing schedule as well. You can’t simply post and forget. Make sure you carve out time in your weekly content delivery model to feed your audience across your social channels as well.

5. Feast On the Low Hanging Fruit

Remember in high school when you had an assignment and you’d knock out all of the easy questions/tasks first?

Or was I the only one that did that?

Well do the same with your blog or online business. Pick some of the smaller tasks and knock those out.

Use a chunking method to put pieces of work into categories. Figure out which tasks will take significant effort and set those in one bucket. Determine which tasks might be attainable in a day and put those in another bucket.

Once you’ve categorized the work ahead of you, you can quickly start to knock out some of the easier tasks.

You could even put the tasks into 15-minute chunks of activity with planned breaks at particular intervals.

This not only moves you forward but it quickly makes you feel better after you’ve made some level of progress.

Go, you!!

Click Here to Download the Free Weekly Planning Template

6. Set Goals

You may be thinking, “But you told me to only concentrate on the tasks directly in front of me and not to worry about next month or next year!”

True, but you still need to have goals.

You don’t have to obsess about those goals and constantly revisit them, but you do need to have them.

Create short term goals perhaps within the next 3 months. Then go a little further for mid-term goals. And finally put some longer term goals down as well.

Don’t go too far in the future as none of us really know what we’re going to be doing in 5 years. Keep your long term goals limited to the next year.

7. Use a System to Keep Track of What You Need to Do

You have to write things down. You do.

You can find the most effective way that works for you (physical notebook, online tool, app, etc) but for the love of God just write things down.

Just by writing down the items you need to accomplish you are already well positioned to not only act on them but to actually complete them.

If you think about something and forget to write it down you will probably forget it.

Entrepreneurs think of things all day long. If you fail to capture the ideas and tasks you think of your brain will become completely scattered.

Use a tool like Evernote to serve as your central hub for everything you need to do.

Capture everything…I mean everything! You can sort out the good from the bad over time.

Find the things you want to work on and move those to the top of the stack.

8. Limit Checking Your Email and Social Media

I originally had this limited to checking email but I decided to expand it to include social media.

Too many times people jump on social media and before they know it time has flown by and productivity has plummeted. It’s like a casino. Your awareness of the concept of time is obliterated.

The same could be said with email too. When you are working email you are typically actually doing something. Whether that is productive work or just work is up for interpretation.

Try to limit the time you spend on these distractors as it disrupts any momentum you’ve gained and interrupts your thought process.

9. Put Yourself in an Environment That is Conducive to Work

When I was in college, I would always head to the library in order to get in the zone and study. I found I worked best when put into an environment that allowed me the ability to focus on the task at hand.

It’s difficult to focus on your work when the TV is on or friends are around.

You need to find somewhere you can detach and focus on what’s on your plate.

Some authors claim their best writing happens when they are isolated on an airplane.

I’m not saying you have to go to a quiet place in order to get work done. You may do well with the coffeehouse feel and the ambient talking in the background.

Find the place where you work best and utilize it going forward to truly focus on your work.

Even if you can’t get to the ideal spot, you can always detach from your current environment. If you are stuck with loud roommates or house guests, throw on your headphones and put on some music and slowly drift off into your zone.

Click Here to Download the Free Weekly Planning Template

10. Exercise

This is probably the hardest strategy to implement but it pays huge dividends.

Exercise energizes your mind and preps your body for work. Try implementing some sort of exercise in your daily routine whether it’s high intensity or just a walk around the neighborhood.

Or if you want to really get gangster with your focus, start doing yoga!

Wrapping It Up

Look, we’re all busy.

But you are one of the crazy ones that want more in your life. As such, you need to establish skills and strategies that will allow you to optimize your ability to get shit done.

Try some of these items I’ve listed above and see if you can start to hone your focus and really start to move your blog or business forward.