How to Be More Attentive or Alert Each Day

5 Things You Can Do to Be Less Scattered and More Focused Daily

4 min readOct 9, 2018

Knowing how to be more attentive is critical today if we want to have greater influence and more success.

With more opportunities available now, being able to remove distractions and focus better, is vital if we want more success.

What Does it Mean to Be More Attentive?

We have to first understand what it means to not be attentive. Someone who is not attentive is usually:

Easily distracted and very scattered.
Unfocused and has poor concentration.
Trying to get more done by multitasking.

Therefore, being more attentive would imply the opposite of these things. Someone who is attentive is:

Goal-oriented or task-focused.
Able to avoid being distracted, therefore can concentrate well.
Able to get things done by working on one thing at a time.

The more attentive and alert we are, the less scattered and more focused we’ll be. This means we’ll be giving more energy to what we are doing.

One thing I have done to be more attentive when I am writing is to use distraction-free mode. In the past, I had a habit of checking things on the internet or doing research as I was writing. This slowed me down and it usually took a lot longer to complete what I wanted to write.

Since I have been using distraction-free mode, I have been able to stay more focused and alert. This has helped my writing flow better, which has enabled me to finish what I need to, much faster. A simple change to my writing process has allowed me to be more attentive and focused.

5 Ways to Be More Attentive or Alert Every Day

To be more attentive, we have to be more intentional in what we do and how we do things. Here are five things that will help us be more attentive to what we’re doing.

Establish empowering habits or rituals. Our daily habits and routines dictate what we do and how we do them. If we have empowering habits, we’ll experience positive results. If we have unhealthy or disempowering habits, we won’t do as well as we’d like to.
Manage your priorities better. Knowing our priorities means we’re clear on what we have to get done on a daily basis. We can use tools like scheduling or planning systems to assist us in managing our priorities. We can also use task or “To Do” lists to keep track of what we want to accomplish.
Set appropriate goals. Goals gives us direction and purpose. We’re likely to be more attentive daily if we’re working towards something bigger or exciting. This means our daily activities have to be aligned with our goals.
Have an accountability partner. When we’re accountable to someone to get things done, we dramatically increase our chances of getting them done. We’re less likely to waste time or procrastinate if we know someone’s counting on us to get things done.
Set up a distraction-free environment. Our environments will either support us or hinder us as we’re working towards a goal. The better we design our environments, the more inspired we’ll be to do what needs to be done. A well-designed environment will help us be more focused.

Conclusion

No one likes to be known as someone who is absent-minded. Learning to be more attentive will require focus and effort in order to lock it in.

By becoming more attentive, we’ll see improvements in what we do and how much we accomplish on a daily basis.

Action Step: Choose one of the ideas suggested so that you can start to be more attentive daily. Keep track of your progress in order to see how much you have improved over a period of time.

Question: What are other things we can do to be more attentive or alert each day?

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