Having a good focus, whether in your tasks, your goals, or life in general, is one of most people’s top keys to achieving success, both in studying and building a career or simply in their daily routine. Another key to success is efficiency and the ability for doing more things quickly and correctly. Unfortunately, not focus neither efficiency come naturally to a lot of people, so it becomes necessary to find strategies to be more efficient, that is, learning to get more done in less time. Here are some tips you can try.

1. Stop Multitasking.
Multitasking may make you feel like you’re doing more, but it will most likely only help you procrastinate and take longer to accomplish each task. Worse yet, it will lower your focus on each task, and most likely increase the probability of making mistakes, causing you to have to go back and re-do things, which will set you back.

2. Start now.
As soon as you start a task – preferably one at a time – your focus shifts to the task ahead, planning what and how to do it, and especially evaluating any progress and difficulties ahead, causing a sort of obsession, which makes it physically and mentally impossible to stop or drop the task. So the best way to get something done is to start doing it instead of thinking about it.

3. Keep Yourself in Check.
The other good way to make yourself do this is to evaluate yourself. Look long and hard at the tasks you really need to accomplish and set yourself some goals and deadlines, either general ones, or smaller ones for each task or stage, and each day. Then, make a list of what you actually did at the end of the day and compare both. Trying to make both the lists identical will help keep you focused and determined, and in turn, ensure you do more with your time.

4. Relax.
You don’t need to do everything in one day, especially because you most likely won’t be able to, so the best thing you can do is having a balanced schedule. Find out which are your best work hours, and try to compress the heaviest – or more challenging – work into those hours. Then make time for regular breaks and long recreational periods, where you can eat, watch a program, or read a book, have some human interaction or go out. This will ensure you have a clear, relaxed mind while you work, and thus keep you focused. Also, it will give you something to look forward to at the end of that pile of work to do, so it will keep you motivated to get through it quicker.

These are some proven methods that work to help retain focus and accomplish more work in less time. It is good to note, though, that each person is different, and some techniques may work better in each individual than others, and you may find a different strategy will work better on you. But if you’re really struggling, these tips may be worth a try, at least as a starting point, to get your focus to where it needs to be.