Nine focused hours

Nine hours.

That's the length of time I've spent working on a complicated Excel spreadsheet today. I'll be seeing Excel formulas and cells in my sleep tonight I think, however I got the spreadsheet complete, the data entered and formatted in the way I needed and over time the nine hours will save me many more hours. It feels good, although I'm fairly drained from the effort and concentration...and the annoying things I don't like about Excel. Ok, it's really quite good I suppose but I feel like just a little whining is acceptable after nine hours of Excel-ling.

Over the years I've found various ways to retain and maintain focus when working at the various things I do either at work or in my personal life.

A five minute walk-around every hour is one of those; it helps me stay fresh, thinking straight and makes the other 55 minutes far more productive. A shift of task is another method; doing something different triggers my brain differently. I also turn off distractions like my phone which goes onto silent and face down so I don't see it ringing and I set "focus time" meaning times between which I refuse any interruption whatsoever - I close my office door and have even resorted to, "do not knock or enter or I will kill you," signs. Very effective. I have even resorted to changing my location, working from a café for instance, but that's dependent upon the nature of the work at hand. Staying hydrated and seeing to my hunger is also important as those things can split focus. All of these methods and others have helped me keep focused and productive.

We all do things in different ways and the various situations in our own lives cause us to have to be flexible and versatile with how we do things as well.

Focus is important though, especially when the tasks we do are work-related or of an important nature. Considering my recent nine-hour-excel-session and my need to remain laser focused I thought I'd put it out there for you folks and ask about your own methods of finding and maintaining focus throughout the tasks that you take on. Feel free to comment below if you'd like to.