Every Wednesday, I go to my church to help supervise elementary grade level children. After spending time with them, I wondered how long their attention was. I did some research and found that they could only focus from ten to fifteen minutes at a time. It led me to a shocking article saying that teenagers have the attention span of a goldfish, eight seconds. I can confirm that my thoughts easily wander while I’m trying to do certain tasks. There are so many things that we have to do throughout the day and if we constantly think about all of them, then we can never get any of them done. To be honest, I’ve been struggling with staying focused on one task at a time. I want to get ahead in life but I feel so sidetracked by my thoughts.

Conversations can be hard for me as well, thinking about what you say before you say it causes you to lie and only say what will make them like you. Even in writing, I’ve found that spontaneous thoughts are more honest and are trying less to impress others.

Tuning out all of the distractions will take time but I’m going to have to be willing to control them. Focus is the key to achieving goals because if you don’t live in the now you can’t change the future. After being a person who did things last minute, it’s hard to learn to live in the present and not think about other things I could be doing instead.

There are some little things that will improve your focus such as getting sleep and eating healthy, but the main way to stay focused is built on discipline. Sometimes discipline means you have to get rid of things like your TV time or your social media time. Even friends can be a distraction to your goals. The urge to scroll through Instagram or watch Youtube instead of focusing on your tasks does not go away quickly.

Setting up a schedule and sticking with it day to day will help you slowly regain control and direction in your life. The most important part is to commit to the schedule so it can work in your favor. When you get distracted, make a mental note of what is distracting you so next time it does not happen again. Even if it does happen, remember to never give up and that it just takes a little bit of time.