Goal Setting - How to Achieve Total Laser Focus

One of the most important attributes that you can develop to help you reach your goals is the ability to entirely and completely focus on the task at hand. However, concentrated focus is a skill that many of us seem to lack. We allow ourselves to become easily distracted, drawn from our path by negative thoughts, fear and procrastination.

Here are my top three tips to help you develop total, laser focus.

Tip #1. Declare your current task as the most important thing in the world. Tell yourself that if you do not begin, stick to and complete this task by your required deadline then dire and appalling consequences will ensue.

We are often taught to concentrate on the positive, but I find that this is one time when the negative can be useful too. No, it may not be true that the world will end if you dont achieve your daily goal, but there are plenty of negative consequences for you to think about.

You will certainly be letting yourself down and you may be letting others down. There may be long term financial consequences and difficult times which could be avoided by getting this job done. Whatever the outcome, it is a useful exercise to raise the stakes for yourself as much as possible.

Write down all the bad stuff that might happen if you dont achieve this goal and pin it up where you work as a reminder why you should be getting this done. Pin it up next to all the good stuff that youre aiming for. This is the ultimate carrot and stick method.

Tip #2. Allow no distractions. We are whimsical creatures with butterfly minds and we like nothing better than being distracted from hard work. Our minds are constantly on the look out for anything which is more pleasurable than what were doing right now, so it is important to put up the barriers.

Tell family, friends and work colleagues that under no circumstances are they to interrupt you while you are working on your task. Turn off the phone, dont look at e-mail. Stay away from the TV and newspapers. Work in a quiet place where there is little background noise and where you cant hear other peoples conversations. If that is not possible, use headphones and listen to calming music while you work. Train your brain to tune out extraneous noise and concentrate on what you are doing.

Tip #3. Do it, do it, do it, till it is done. This is the most important rule of all. Once you have raised the stakes and banned all distractions, you must take consistent, concerted and vigorous action. Have everything you need to hand, start when you said you would and keep going with full and complete determination till your task is complete.

Think of yourself as a highly efficient, well maintained machine which was designed to carry out precisely this task. Tell yourself that no other machine has ever existed that was so well suited to this job. Revel in your skills, enjoy your mastery of the task and take pride in your determination.

If you follow these three guiding principles, whatever you set out to do will become easier, be completed faster and will give you more pleasure. Try them next time you need to achieve anything important.

Hi, my name is Andrew Grant. I hope you enjoyed this article. If you would like to read more great articles on self improvement and making money online, I'd like to invite you to subscribe to my free newsletter, which you'll find at : http://www.money-and-mind.com

Eastern Buddhism