How to Increase Your Attention Span to Improve the Quality of Your Work

5 Simple Steps You Can Take to Boost Your Daily Outputs

Neel Raman
4 min readMay 11, 2021

Knowing how to increase your attention span will make a difference to your daily outputs and the quality of your work.

Every day you have to deal with distractions, which can affect your ability to concentrate, which means your attention span will decrease.

1-Minute Summary Video

https://youtu.be/MKNDDMdxQfo

What is Your Attention Span?

Your attention span is the time you spend on a task without getting distracted. It’s your ability to focus on a task before switching to something else.

It’s been estimated the average adult attention span is now about eight seconds. Staying focused is one of our biggest challenge during our workday.

Why Increase Your Attention Span?

A short attention span has many negative effects, which can include:

  • Poor productivity and performance.
  • Having low attention to detail.
  • Not completing tasks on time.
  • Inability to prioritize tasks well.
  • Having unproductive or unhealthy habits.

When you increase your attention span, you will reduce these effects, which means your outputs and the quality of work will improve.

Signs You Have a Short Attention Span

A short attention span is often a sign of a bigger issue, which is why it’s beneficial to get professional medical advice to address it.

Common signs of a short attention span include:

  • You cannot focus on one task and often multitask.
  • You find it difficult to sit in silence.
  • You need to have something in your hands all the time to keep you occupied or busy.
  • You have a lot of clutter around your workspace.
  • You have the urge to do something else when you’re working on a task.
  • You have trouble getting quality sleep consistently.
  • You feel the need to do something all the time.

There are steps you can take to increase your attention span and become a more productive person.

increase your attention span

5 Ways to Increase Your Attention Span for Better Quality Work

Here are five effective ways to increase your attention span, so you can improve the quality of your work and give more attention to your priorities.

  1. Get enough rest every night. A distracted person is often a sign they’re not getting enough rest. Making sleep a priority will ensure you wake up every morning feeling rested, which will help you concentrate better.
  2. Take care of your body. A healthy body means a healthy mind too. Exercising regularly is essential for a healthy mind and body. This also supports better brain health and will improve your overall wellness.
  3. Learn to relax your mind. A cluttered or chaotic mind is also an unfocused mind. You can relax your mind through practices such as meditation, deep breathing, and also using releasing techniques to manage your emotions.
  4. Avoid multitasking and remove distractions. Multitasking is an unproductive habit that will lower your outputs. Train yourself to work on one task at a time. Use the power of batching similar tasks together to avoid task or context switching. Your ability to remove distractions will affect your ability to focus on one task at a time.
  5. Play certain games to train your brain to focus. Certain games can help increase your ability to concentrate. These games include Sudoku, chess, jigsaw puzzles, scrabble, or even crossword puzzles. These games will train your brain to focus on one thing at a time, which will help increase your attention span.

Final Thoughts

If you want to become a highly effective person, increasing your attention span will certainly help. Another thing to note is when you increase your attention span, you will conserve mental energy, which means you won’t get tired or distracted as often.

By increasing your attention span, you will develop self-discipline, which will make a difference in what you accomplish in life.

Action Step: Practice working on one task at a time. Remove common distractions, which can include your devices such as your phone or tablet. Use a timer when working, so you know what you need to get gone in that period.

Question: What are other ways to increase your attention span?

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Neel Raman

If you’re a leader that wants your team to perform better, get a free copy of my bestselling book, “Building High-Performing Teams” here: http://bit.ly/2rS1T4F