1 Tool To Stay Laser Focused From 9-5
Tell me, does this sound familiar?
You have a long list of things that must be accomplished today. You work online for your blog/biz and part of that means being active on social media.
First you start on Twitter, responding to Tweets, interacting with followers and scheduling Tweets for the day.
You scroll down to a Tweet from one of your favourite bloggers. 'My 10 secrets which exploded my Twitter following in 30 days.'
You want to grow your Twitter following. Yeah, you have actual work to get to, but at the same time you're never going to remember to go back to that tweet if you don't read the article now.
You read the article. 'So helpful!'
The related posts at the bottom get you and you find yourself down the rabbit hole of amazing content. 30 minutes later...
'Ahhhh, I haven't finished scheduling my tweets.'
Back to work you go.
Next you hop on Facebook to do your social scheduling. One glance on your timeline and again more great content, 'How-to make 5 essential edits to your sales page' just was posted, a new report on SEO is live with groundbreaking new findings, the Instagram algorithm has changed and there's an article on how to still succeed against the algorithm odds.
3 tabs open and again you've been sidetracked from your work.
It can be a challenge to stay focused on our work when there's so much enticing us online.
To to stay productive during the workday I've made a couple changes which has drastically improved my ability to get my work done!
First is a strategy, second is an online tool I love.
My Strategy For Focus
First, I set an area of focus for each month.
For example, this month I focus on Pinterest, next month my email list, the next Facebook, etc. This means that I only consume related content during the month I'm focusing on that specific social platform or aspect of my business.
Long gone are the days I would read an article, make improvements to whatever the article was on, only to notice a new article and make more changes to another platform an hour later.
It's ineffective to spread ourselves thin across so many different tasks and platforms, never to be really focused and able to commit to making improvements in one area.
But what happens when there's a new article posted, guaranteed to be lost in our Twitter or Facebook feed forever if we don't read it right then?
I mean there's fantastic free content out there just waiting to be read or watched, we don't want to waste that!
My Tool Of Choice For Focus
I've found a tool that I love to combat this constant issue.
When you find something you want to view later, put it in Pocket.
Pocket is a browser extension available on both desktop and mobile which will save anything to your 'pocket'. It's a little online storage system to keep everything you want to read later in an easy-to-find area. You can even label your saved pieces of content into categories.
Videos, podcasts, blog posts, etc. Pocket saves it all.
I'm constantly saving things to my pocket both when I'm on my laptop and on my phone.
The two 'pockets' synch and when I'm ready to tackle the next big goal of the month, I check my pocket to find the related articles I've saved.
Say it's Pinterest month for me, I click on my Pocket and check out my Pinterest category. It's a perfect way to have all the best articles on a topic ready for me when I want to read them.
Pocket enables me to control the way I consume content online.
No longer am I distracted by those shiny gems of content at inconvenient times in which I really should be doing my work.
Pocket enables me to be the boss and save the best of the internet for when I'm ready for it.
Pocket is a free tool, you may find it at getpocket.com.
Tell me, what other challenges do you find when it comes to staying focused during the work day? What else has worked well for you?
