This approach is related to the concept of self-efficacy, which means believing that you can perform certain tasks. If you first succeed with an easy task, you gain more confidence and prepare yourself for bigger challenges. By gradually building your skills and confidence step by step, you improve your self-confidence.

The idea is that each small victory contributes to your self-confidence. When you do something that is within or just outside your comfort zone, you slowly expand your comfort zone. This means you grow by challenging yourself with things that are just a bit more difficult than what you are used to. In this way, you improve your skills and self-confidence step by step. This is similar to the principle “Fake it till you make it,” where by practicing, you eventually become truly capable of doing something.

Related:

• Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right
• Start with as little as possible and add complexity as you go
• Motivation

In recent years, our phone usage has increased significantly. Do you know what research shows? We pick up our phones on average more than 350 times a day! That means you reach for your device approximately every two minutes and 43 seconds. These figures are almost four times higher than in 2019, when we checked our phones on average only 96 times a day. This increase is partly due to changes in our daily lives and how we work since COVID-19, with much more online communication.

The increase in phone usage has various causes, including phone addiction. Social media and other apps are designed to capture your attention, making it easy to get distracted. The constant need to stay connected and not miss out makes it difficult to put your phone down. Additionally, notifications constantly interrupt your activities, explaining why you reach for your phone so often.

This trend also affects your productivity and mental health. Constantly switching between tasks and checking your phone makes you work less efficiently and experience more stress. Although technology has improved our lives in many ways, it’s important to be mindful of your phone usage and also take time to digitally unwind. By paying better attention to how often you use your phone, you can find a better balance between being online and offline.

Related:

• Avoid excessive task switching to increase efficiency
• Workers lose 9% of their time at work by toggling roughly 1200 times per day between applications and websites
• Hiding your phone doesn’t help you concentrate better

A 5-minute unstructured break can be sufficient to restore your concentration. Research from the University of Sydney has shown that a short interruption of just five minutes, without specific activities or structure, is enough to bring your attention back to optimal levels. This means you don’t necessarily have to take a walk or watch a relaxing video; simply doing nothing for a short period can be effective. This finding supports the theory that a short, unstructured break is a powerful way to combat mental fatigue and increase productivity.

The attention restoration theory suggests that our brains need periodic rest to function optimally. Unstructured breaks, where you step away from your work without specific tasks or goals, can help restore your cognitive resources. These types of breaks offer a moment of mental rest and can therefore contribute to better focus and concentration when you return to work. It is a simple but effective strategy to improve the quality of your work without needing extensive or planned activities.

Related:

• Take regular ‘thinking walks’ to change your brain to enhance thinking, creativity and memory
• Try to get four hours of concentrated work into a workday, and never more than six
• Work cycle

Research shows that mindfulness meditation, even in short sessions, helps you distribute your attention better. This means that your brain handles the attention needed for difficult tasks more efficiently. In a study, people who meditated briefly performed better on attention tests, such as the Flanker Task and the Attention Network Test, without their reaction time worsening. This shows that meditation helps you concentrate better, even if you don’t have much experience with it yet. Although we don’t know exactly how long this improved concentration lasts, the results suggest that even a short meditation can enhance your concentration ability.

Related:

• Mindfulness meditation reduces the size of your amygdala, making you less prone to distractions and procrastination
• Scatterfocus

Noise-cancelling headphones are often seen as the solution to distractions in open offices. They are designed to muffle ambient noise so you can concentrate better. But you know what’s funny? Research shows that even though you think your concentration improves with such headphones, there is actually no real difference in how well you can focus. You might feel calmer, but you’re not really more productive or focused.

In open offices, where it’s often very noisy, noise-cancelling headphones serve another purpose. They are actually a kind of “do not disturb” sign for your colleagues. If you’re wearing such headphones, your colleagues are less likely to approach you for a chat. That helps a bit against distractions. But the real problem of all the noise around you remains. And because your concentration doesn’t really improve, it remains difficult to work well in such an environment.

Related:

• An increase of 10 dB noise in the workplace reduces productivity by 5%
• Open-plan workspace