How to Have More Focused Hours in Your Day : zen habits

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Increasing your focused time

It comes down to three habits:

Asking yourself what meaningful, impactful work you can get done today.
Creating space for meaningful work instead of just doing busywork or being distracted all day.
Working in fullscreen mode and diving in.

Working in Fullscreen Mode

This habit is about letting this one meaningful task become your whole universe.

This translates into writing in a fullscreen writing app. Or opening a browser tab in a separate window (with no other tabs showing) and putting that window in fullscreen mode. It can also mean doing one thing at a time in offline life as well.

Deciding on Your Impactful Work

It’s an incredible habit to take even a few moments at the beginning of your day (or the end of the day before) to give some thought to where you’d like to concentrate your attention.

Ask yourself: What is worth doing today? What is worth focusing on? What is worth spending the limited time you have in this life?

Creating Space for Focused Work

Very often we’ll push off the bigger, more meaningful tasks because they take longer, and we’re either in distracted mode or quick-task mode.

Set aside the next 20 minutes for writing, or getting moving on a big project. You don’t have to do the whole project in this time, but just the act of giving yourself more space to focus is a huge shift.