A few things that help me stay focused. What are the things that help you?

A few things that help me stay focused. What are the things that help you?

It can be difficult to stay focused as an Indie Hacker. We all tend to look for that one productivity system that will work for us every day.

I’ve tried lots of different strategies and for my brain it doesn’t seem like there’s a one size fits all solution. Some days I can focus for hours and hours without even trying and some days it’s an uphill struggle to go 10 minutes without getting distracted.

If you’re having one of those days and struggling to get anything done, here are a few methods you could try to get you back on track:

The Unschedule

I really like the “unschedule”, from a book called The Now Habit by Neil Fiore, where you block in all the non-work things you need to/want to do in your calendar - and then you fill in the gaps with focused work time.

Our natural instinct is to schedule in work time first, because when you work a normal nine-to-five that time is immovable, and everything has to fit around it. But if you work for yourself and no longer have a regular structure, your day instead becomes a blank slate. You’ll probably find yourself becoming more familiar with something called Parkinson’s Law:

“Work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion”.

Unburdened from the rigid work structures that you’ve become accustomed to means you might need to think of your time in a different way - by making the things you want/need to do outside of work immovable, and fitting your work around it.

Using the unschedule can ensure that you stay on task and don’t end up spending a full day on something that should really only take an hour or two and prevent work from eating into your time with your family.

Focus Mixes

There are some good focus music mixes on YouTube, these are what tend to help get me into a flow state. Apple Music and Spotify also have some great productivity focused playlists nowadays. There’s also brain.fm which is designed for exactly this purpose, although I’ve not tried it myself.

Background Noise

I have quite bad anxiety, and on days where I’m really struggling just to get started, I’ve found having a TV show in the background (just audio, no picture) that I’ve already seen a few times can help. Because you don’t have to pay attention to what they’re saying it almost becomes background noise as if you were in a cafe and it can be quite soothing.

Make sure it’s something you’ve seen before. If you put on that Netflix documentary that you’ve been dying to see, you’re not likely to get much done!

Incrementing Pomodoros

I love the Pomodoro Technique (and I’m far from the only one). But if I’m really struggling to get started even 25 minutes can feel like an uphill struggle.

I often do a variation where the pomodoros go up in increments, so I start with 5 mins, then a short break, then 10 mins, then a short break, then 20 mins, then another short break, then 40 minutes with a longer break. There’s something about the fact that you initially only have to commit to 5 minutes that helps to kickstart your productivity.

I actually built a free app for this technique called Momentum. It’s still very much in beta but if you like this technique give it a try and let me know if it helps you.

Those are my tips for staying focused. Let me know in the comments what works for you!