Focus is one of the essential traits necessary for achieving ambitious goals. Here are 11 ways to improve yours.

Stop responding to “emergencies.”

Stop allowing yourself to be distracted by the unimportant. If you’re spending 80 percent of your time handling customer complaints about hold times, when will you find time to identify the problem and integrate a new scheduling system? Keep your attention on tasks that specifically contribute to solving the problem. Let fires burn themselves out in the meantime.

Stop focusing on big problems.

The worst way to accomplish a big goal you’ve set is to focus on the problem itself. Instead, focus on the solution. Come up with three tasks to do each day that will get you closer to your goal. These are your “process goals.” Be relentless in your commitment to accomplish these three process goals each day. Don’t let anyone or anything keep you from completing them.

Be willing to disappoint.

When you’re focusing on getting your top three process goals done each day, you will occasionally disappoint colleagues, clients, and customers by not dropping everything to help them. That’s okay. Prioritizing your tasks doesn’t mean you’ll never help someone else out. It just means that you’ll get to it after you’ve made sure you have time for your most important tasks.

Walk toward unpleasant or stressful tasks.

The most important tasks each day are also typically the tasks we fear, dread, and avoid most. Tackling process goals daily won’t always produce immediate results. But being persistently focused on process goal completion will help you avoid unproductive slumps. On a daily basis, rally your energy and courage to tackle those daily goals that have the greatest influence on your performance and therefore success.

Limit temptation.

You have only so much self-control within you, so spend it on what is most important. Limit the temptations in your life so you don’t deplete your reserve of discipline before getting priorities done. If you have a weakness for “surfing the net,” then don’t go online. If you have difficulty saying, “I can’t talk now, I’m working” to friends who call during the day, let their calls go to voicemail. Or do your most trying tasks very early in the day, before distractions intrude.

“Over-practice” discipline.

Just as baseball players practice swinging with a weighted bat so that in a game batting feels easy, you can improve your discipline by pushing yourself to be more disciplined than usual. Choose one process goal to overachieve one time per week. If one of your process goals is to make 10 cold calls a day, then once a week do 15. If you choose Friday, the hardest day to stay disciplined, it will reinforce your ability to maintain discipline and focus the other weekdays.

Team up with a “mental” coach.

Many of us perform better when we know someone is watching us or we feel accountable to someone else. Yet a part of being a high performer requires that you watch, evaluate, and are accountable to yourself. So conjure up a coach in your mind. Think of someone who inspired you, challenged you, and served as a role model. When faced with a daunting task, ask yourself, “What would So-and-So do if she had two reports and only 24 hours to complete them?”

Control your “performance arousal.”

A good way to increase focus and hence performance success is learning how to moderate your performance arousal. That’s the feeling of being pumped up with potential energy and you’re super aware, ready to rumble, and psyched. On a 10-point scale, with 1 being half asleep, and 10 performing at 1,000 mph, you want to be at a number in between that feels more like the perfect symphony of calm, aggressive, and confident. The best way to control performance arousal is to be super prepared for the task that awaits you.

Stay healthy.

Maintaining focus is dependent on good health. Lack of sleep, depleted energy from overindulging the night before, poor nutrition, too much caffeine, and too little exercise are all factors that interfere with one’s ability to focus. If you have a big goal to achieve, “train” for it like a professional athlete. For optimal mental focus and performance, take a holistic approach to physical and mental health — sleep, rest, low stress, good diet, and vigorous exercise.

Drill, baby, drill.

Among teams of equal talent, winning and losing are determined in the preparation. Legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi led his teams to greatness by drilling plays again and again and again. His power sweep (a simple play that relied on the perfect execution of the fundamentals of blocking and teamwork) dominated pro football for 10 years. Know every detail that goes into your process goals, and drill, baby, drill until they become second nature.

Do a mental workout every day.

Doing my 100-Second Mental Workout every day reinforces your goal, the process needed to accomplish it, and jumpstarts your motivation and focus. In my book, Executive Toughness, I explain this in detail. Briefly, it’s this: Step 1: take a deep centering breath to get calm and focused. Step 2: state who you are as if you’d already achieved your goal. Step 3: play a mental video of what your life is like as if you’d accomplished your goal. Step 4: repeat step 2. Step 5: Take another centering breath.

.      Define the win for your business. A startup is not a parlor game. With a for-profit startup, it’s all about solving a problem that embodies real pain, for real customers who are willing and able to pay for a solution. For social entrepreneurs, it’s all about making the world a better place. Figure out early what it takes to win, or you will lose by default.

.      Adopt a business vision that fits your self-image. In every case, you need a long-term vision that drives self-fulfillment and self-image as well as business success. Assess your strengths and weaknesses, and visualize how these will lead to business success. If the vision doesn’t fuel your passion and match your skills, you won’t like the lifestyle.

.      Establish real business goals and processes. It’s hard to achieve things that have not been defined, and the steps to get there are not clear. I recommend a business focus on a one-year timeframe, with a limit of three product goals and three process goals.

.      Prioritize the priorities. Prioritize or perish should be every entrepreneur’s mantra. Accountability requires splitting your big product goals into daily process goals and scheduling them to completion. Don’t get distracted with the unimportant.

.      Practice accountability through self-evaluation. Learn to look in the mirror every day. No evaluation means no awareness of how you are doing, which gives you no basis for improvement. Good performance does not require perfection, which is unachievable.

.      Control your emotions to control your performance. Learn to control the degree to which your nerves and emotions are engaged and on alert. By maintaining basic mental stability and physical fitness, and preparing yourself intellectually you will function more effectively and successes will grow.

.      Prepare to say the right thing. Practice your response to the three most common situations you face. Creating and documenting scripts, like your elevator pitch, for key interactions help you and your team maintain focus. They build confidence and reduce the anxiety that often gets in the way of leadership performance.

.      Prepare mentally every day. Your mind can be strengthened every day, just like a muscle. Complete a mental workout every day to dramatically improve your focus and ability to execute consistently. It’s one of the most effective methods known for training your body and mind to stay under control and perform to your potential.

.      Develop a relentless and optimistic solution focus. Replacing all negative thinking is one of the most critical pieces of your mental toughness puzzle. Approach all solutions one step at a time, where a step is any improvement to the current situation. Remember that a focus only on problems will likely cause more problems.

.      When you set your mind to do something, find a way to get it done, no matter what. While a relentless solution focus is the mental step, discipline is the action step that makes solutions materialize. In this way, discipline delivers success. Make discipline a habit by limiting temptation and conscious practice.

We all need these fundamentals of mental toughness to succeed and lead in today’s business environment. It takes more than market knowledge and technical skill alone. That’s the fun part of the challenge to most serious entrepreneurs. If it was easy, anyone could do it. Are you ready to step up to the plate?

by Marty Zwilling

Huffington Post

When I was hired by the St. Louis Cardinals in 2006, it wasn’t to teach them mechanics. It was to train them in Mental Toughness. I became their first Director of Mental Training, and that year they went on to win their first World Series in 20 years.

Since that time, I have trained many world-class athletes as well as entrepreneurs and executives using the same techniques. There are important parallels between highly productive business leaders and their high-performing athlete counterparts. First and foremost, businesspeople are prone to many of the same unhelpful behaviors and mindsets as underperforming athletes, which prevent both groups from being at the top of their game and outshining the competition.

Here are five ways to train your business brain in Mental Toughness, and prevent unproductive habits from getting in the way of your personal best.

Focus on your swing, not the home run.

If you’re focused on the target, rather than the process needed to reach it, you may never get there. On a daily basis, rally your energy and courage to tackle those daily goals that have the greatest influence on your performance and, therefore, your success. I call these process goals. If your aim is to double your client load in one year, then figure out three specific tasks, or process goals, you need to complete each day that will help you reach that ultimate target. If you are relentless and consistent about completing your three daily process goals, you will succeed.

Keep your eye on the ball.

Many driven workers believe that they can answer emails, talk to a client, and check their ecalendar all at once. But recent research out of Stanford University found that multitaskers are not only less productive than their single-minded counterparts, they may also suffer from weaker self-control ability. Control your tendency to become distracted. Keep your focus on one task at a time. Turn off your cell phone and shut down your email while you’re completing the three process tasks you identified above. The American Psychological Association cites a study showing that multitasking leads to as much as a 40 percent drop in productivity.

Follow your code of conduct.

Just as professional players have a specific set of rules to follow during and after the game, leaders need to establish their own “not to-do” list. This might include counterproductive tasks such as taking clients after 3:30 p.m., or responding to company emails during family time. Schedule your calendar rather than letting your calendar schedule you.

Rest and rejuvenate between games.

Lack of sleep causes fatigue, a productivity killer. Nearly 4 out of 10 workers are regularly fatigued, according to a recent study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. The rate of lost productivity for workers with fatigue was 66 percent, compared with 26 percent for workers without fatigue. Total lost productive time averaged 5.6 hours per week for workers with fatigue, compared to 3.3 hours for their counterparts without fatigue.

Get 7-9 hours of sleep per night—and make this a priority.

Don’t push through the pain.

In sports, this is what causes injury. In the workplace, it’s known as “extreme working,” and it results in lower performance. New research found that 69 percent of extreme workers—super high achievers who regularly work 60-80 hours a week and are in the top 6 percent of earners—admit that their extreme working habits undermine their health. Most of these workers can’t sustain this level of performance, and end up burning out, just like promising athletes who have to sit on the bench all season or retire early because of injuries.

• Roles: What an individual is responsible for (i.e.: I am responsible for answering or returning all incoming calls, I am responsible for each contact being placed into the tracking system and given to one of the sales associates, and I am responsible for all open inventory and closing paperwork).
• Rules: How the individual is expected to “fill” the responsibilities (I am expected to handle all phone contacts with “phone etiquette” protocol provided, I am expected to return all missed calls by the end of the shift, and I am expected to have all paperwork and tracking system information finished completely within 4 hours of initial system input).

I have had the rare good fortune of being a part several championship teams in both the athletic world and in the corporate arena. One of the patterns I have noticed with world class teams is that the roles and rules of each team-member are defined in a manner in which gaps and overlaps are eliminated.

• Gaps: In sport, gaps are the equivalent of holes in the offense or defense. Gaps are exposed on defense when the opponent scores easily or “untouched”. In business, gaps manifest as bottlenecks or poor quality products or customer service.
• Overlaps: On the field, overlaps are when two players take responsibility for one job and in sport this usually leads to gaps. In business overlaps will lead to gaps unless the organization is running “fat”. Either way overlaps indicate a lack of communication and execution of individual rules and roles within a team.

To eliminate gaps and overlap I strongly recommend the following exercise to all organizational leaders. If you are not on the management team complete step one of the exercise and ask your manager to look it over and provide feedback.

• Identify: Ask each member of the team to answer the following 2 questions: The top 3 responsibilities of my position are…The top 3 rules (the expectations associated with how I will meet my responsibilities) for my position are…
• Educate: Compare each team member’s answers with the answers the executive team has prepared for the same questions.
• Motivate and Support: Provide motivation and support for those individuals needing assistance with the accomplishment of individual roles or rules.

Defining roles and rules doesn’t have to be a labor intensive activity. Set an hour aside to address the issue and watch the organization begin to immediately run more efficiently and productively.

The moment step into the present moment and get in touch with choice and clarity is what I call The Now Effect. The benefits of this include:

• Stress-reduction
• Increased clarity of mind, balance, energy, zest for life
• Improve complex problem-solving and decision-making
• Enhanced leadership
• More emotional intelligence, less reactive
• Mood regulation and immune system enhancement

You might have heard about this before and even practiced it a couple times. But the habitual ways of thinking and acting take over and it goes by the wayside.

So let this post be an opportunity to commit or recommit to cultivating mindfulness at work and bringing more of The Now Effect into your life.

Take a few deep breaths right now after reading these words. Then go down the list and honestly ask yourself, when was the last time I did this and where can I bring it into my day?

Here are 9 ways you can start today:

• As the workday begins, slightly slow down as you walk to the car, check in with your body and notice any tension. Try and soften it.
• Trying driving to work a little slower today and let red lights be reminders to just notice your breathing.
• As you walk to the office, breathe in and out with every three steps. Notice the sensation of walking, it took you over a year to learn how to do this.
• If you sit at a desk, take a few breaths before checking the computer for emails or updates
• If possible, maybe once a week, eat by yourself in silence, eat slightly slower and really tune into the sense of taste while eating.
• When talking to a colleague, notice if your mind is wandering onto something else and gently come back to mindful listening.
• When walking back to the car from work, practice the same way you walked to your car.
• No need to ‘rush’ home to ‘relax’, drive slightly slower and experiment with new radio stations, maybe reflect on what you actually did that day. What was positive, what was stuff you would like to do better?
• When getting home, if you have a family, take a few minutes in the car and keep your breath company, notice if your body is tense, and if so, try to soften those muscles by breathing in and out of them, with awareness, and just letting them be.

The fascinating thing is that researchers in the last few years have shown that we can actually change our brain architecture for the better with these practices.

You can practice mindfulness and experience more of The Now Effect in your life, opening up to more choice, opportunity, possibility and effectiveness. Just follow those 9 ways to get started today.

Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in private practice in West Los Angeles and is author of the The Now Effect, co-author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook , Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of the Mindful Solutions at Work App, the Mindful Solutions audio series, and the Mindfulness at Work™ program currently being adopted in multiple multinational corporations. Join The Now Effect Community to get free Daily Now Moment Reminders and access to a free monthly live online event with a teaching and direct Q&A with Elisha.

“I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in focus picture of it in my head. It’s like a color movie. First I see the ball where I want it to finish, nice and white and sitting up high on bright green grass. Then the scene quickly changes and I see the ball going there: its path, trajectory and shape, even its behavior on landing.”

Highly successful athletes like Jack Nicklaus know the importance of mentally rehearsing before performances. The same is true for business, those who are most successful mentally rehearse before they perform.  In business, unlike sport, the main tool of performance is what you say. Whether it be on that ever important sales call, the year end performance review or addressing your company at the national operations meeting, what you say in business is incredibly important and you must know what you are going to say, before you say it. The act of scripting, or writing out what needs to be said, is an incredibly important step in controlling success.

The first step in scripting is to identify what should be scripted. Take a moment now and identify one work task where scripting would be helpful. Now let’s figure out what to actually say. With scripts I advise my clients to start with the first sentence or two, include the “call to action” sentence and then the closing sentence. More can be added as you go but get the rough outline as a start and then build from there. For example, a wealth manager uses the following as her script with current clients.

Mrs Smith, this is Jane calling from Thomas Financial. I was looking over your account and wanted to discuss 2 items with you. First, I wanted to compliment you on keeping yourself so diversified, you have really done a great job, and I just wanted to let you know you should be proud of what you have done. I also wanted to let you know the current market conditions have created some conditions that I believe put you in a position to further improve your portfolio. I would like for you to consider placing an order for 10,000 dollars in (product X)… Thanks again for taking a few minutes with me Mrs Smith, it was good talking with you and know that I will stay in touch when other opportunities arise.

Once you have your first script complete I strongly advise you to record yourself practicing the script you just created. Record and then listen and edit if need be. After recording listening and editing your script three times it will be ready to go. Once you have done so I would recommend starting a digital file titled scripts. Keep adding to your file and eventually you will know what to say before you say it in all of your most important situations.

Your mind can be strengthened just like a muscle. The mental workout is a concrete and proven process that delivers results in the same way as a physical strengthening plan. That is, if you complete the exercises as instructed on a regular basis, you cannot help but develop mental toughness.

The mental workout is a 5 step process that many of the world’s top athletes and business people credit with taking them to the next level of success. The mental workout is an incredibly powerful tool that will undoubtedly put you in a position to dramatically improve confidence and help you execute at a higher level more consistently.

The 5 step mental workout:

Step 1: Centering Breath; a controlled breath where you breath in for 6 seconds, hold for 2, and then exhale for 7 seconds. The Centering Breath will control your heart rate and allow your mind to work effectively.

Step 2: Identity Statement; essentially a personal mantra that reflects who you are and what you hope to achieve. An example of an identity statement is “I am confident and I thrive on pressure, I am the most focused and successful CEO in the country ”.

Step 3: Personal Highlight Reel; The Personal highlight reel is 60 seconds worth of visualization in which you spend 30 seconds remembering 3 things done well in the previous 24 hours and then imagining 3 things you are going to do well in the upcoming day.

Step 4: Identity Statement; Repeat to yourself again your identity statement further driving home your self-image of success

Step 5: Centering Breath: Take another centering breath to remind yourself of the feeling of being calm and in control.

Just as your body responds to consistent strength training, your mind responds to regular mental workouts. Try to take the 1 minute and 40 seconds each day to develop your mental strength and stay in shape for performance. If you should miss a day here or there, don’t panic. One missed appoint­ment with your physical trainer won’t sink your overall physical fitness, and the occasional missed mental workout won’t kill your progression to success. If you do miss a day, simply make the commitment to get back on track the fol­lowing day.

By making mental workouts a habit, you will set your­self on a trajectory toward developing mental toughness and focus as you have never experienced.

Perfectionist Evaluation Characteristics:

1. Write successes off as “that is just what I expect of myself”.

2. Heavy focus on failures.

Performance Evaluation Characteristics:

1. Give credit to self where credit is due.

2. Relentlessly pursue improvement.

Get in the daily habit of taking 4 minutes per day to answer the following three questions and you will literally train yourself out of the perfectionist mentality and into that of the performance evaluator. The three questions below are scientifically proven to increase productivity and success.

1. What three things did I do well today?

2. What is my number one most needed improvement for tomorrow?

3. What is one thing I can do differently to help make the needed improvement?

You can further improve your effectiveness by answering each question with what I call level 2 detail. Level 2 detail essentially means that each answer is detailed enough to take your mind to a specific point in time. For instance a level one answer to question one might be “I did well today with my effort”. Whereas level two would be, “I completely finished every one of my process goals”. Level two means be specific, the more specific the better.

My clients usually answer their three performance evaluation questions each day as they are leaving the office or as one of the last things before going to sleep each evening. Either way, remember to only allow four minutes for completion of your three performance evaluation questions. If the four minutes are up and you are still not finished, stop where you are and feel good about what you have done. You will learn to get it done within the four minutes by thinking about the answers throughout the day. Thinking about what you are doing well and what needs to be improved during your day is proof that the training is working and your perfectionist tendencies are being replaced with that of the performance evaluator.

A person’s arousal state is essentially how amped up a person is during performance. Think of arousal this way: on a scale of 1-10, a 1 would be trying to perform while you are half asleep and a 10 would be trying to perform after drinking 35 cups of coffee. You don’t want to be a 1 and you don’t want to be a 10. The pitcher knew he pitched his best when he kept his arousal at a 6. On the scale of 1-10 he knew that if he was a 6 before throwing each pitch he would feel a perfect combination of calm, aggressive and confident all at the same time. He also knew that keeping his IAS at a 6 throughout the game was probably the most important thing to do to ensure success.

The next day the pitcher felt great going through his pregame warm-up; however, he had forgotten to emphasize his ideal arousal state in his mental preparation. In the first few innings of the game his arm felt great, but he struggled throwing strikes and was having to work himself out of difficulty. As he sat in the dugout between innings, it occurred to him that he was not keeping his arousal under control. He realized that his IAS was at an 8 or 9. He promptly took a few centering breaths and thought about his IAS of 6 until he could feel his calm, confident feeling. He then pitched several strong innings, leading his team to a World Series victory.

Each time you make a sales pitch, facilitate a meeting, or participate in a performance review, you are performing. Think about it… for non-athletes, these business performances are every bit as important to success as throwing the game-winning pitch is to the Major League baseball player.

One of the most productive methods of increasing focus and performance success is learning how to control your ideal arousal state (IAS). A critical first step in controlling arousal is to know what your IAS actually is. Your IAS will vary according to the nature of the task at hand. Some tasks will require a higher IAS than others. For example, you may want to be a 7 to exhibit enthusiasm and positive energy when doing large group presentations. An IAS of 5 may allow you to slow down and be more attentive during one-on-one performance reviews. There are many reasons why your IAS may change across tasks.

First, identify what you consider to be your three most important work performances. Now I would like you to identify your ideal arousal state for each of your three most important work tasks. To figure out exactly what your IAS is for each task, think about the past times when you have performed really well at the tasks you listed. Assess on the 1—10 IAS scale what number you were while you performed at the high end of your potential.

Now that you know your IAS for the three most important career performances, learn to get yourself to that IAS state before each and every performance in the future. Here are some tips on doing so:

If you need to increase your IAS, use a specific memory from a time when you were experiencing the desired IAS number. For example, if you perform your best during sales calls at a 6, then remember a time when you made a successful phone call while feeling the IAS of 6. Remembering the specific call will help cause the IAS in the present.

If you are too amped up, try taking a centering breath. Breath in for 6 seconds, hold for 2, and then exhale for 7. Doing so will slow your heart rate and allow you to lower your arousal state.

Make the commitment to put yourself in a position to feel your IAS before every performance. Commit to taking a few seconds before each presentation or meeting or sales call. Your consistency and execution will dramatically increase by doing so.

Then one day, as I was sitting in a sauna sweating by myself in the University of Missouri’s rec center, I did something I had never done before. I did a life projection. I thought to myself, “If I continue living my life the same exact manner I am living right now, how will my life turn out in 5 years?”

What I saw made me very sad. I pictured myself as a slightly overweight, heavy drinking, under-achieving, excuse-making chump of a man.

Still sitting in the sauna I decided to imagine instead how I wanted my life to be in 5 years. What I saw made me smile. I imagined myself as a successful business professional, happily married, healthy and sober. I saw a man of integrity and character who was proud of how his life was turning out.

I liked this vision so much that I began calling it my Vision of Self-Image. I made a point to take 30 seconds per day and watch my Vision of Self image mental video. Eventually I began adding on another 30 seconds to the video that I called “daily integrity”. In the “daily integrity” mental video I would mentally rehearse what I needed to do in the upcoming 24 hours to make sure I was moving myself in the direction of my 5 year Vision of Self-Image. I would literally see myself making good decisions and doing what I needed to do throughout the upcoming day, anything from waking up at the right time, to completing my studies, to controlling my drinking and prioritizing exercise.

Every day I would spend a total of 60 seconds imagining how I wanted my life to be and then what I could do in the next 24 hours to help make my vision become a reality. Slowly but surely I started doing better and better. I liked the changes I was making in my life. So much so that 20 years later I still complete my Vision of Self-Image and “daily integrity” mental videos.

All in all, it takes me 60 seconds per day to complete, which honestly feels like a lot of work some days. However, I realize that without knowing where I want my life to go and then mentally rehearsing each day what it takes to get there, I am likely to end up as a person I don’t want to be.

For whatever reason, I am built in a way that if I don’t put energy into achieving greatness, I turn out to be a chump. If you’re anything like me, you might want to consider putting 60 seconds per day into achieving your own level of greatness. Remember the days you don’t feel like completing your Vision of Self Image and “daily integrity” mental rehearsal are the days you most need to do so…trust me on this, it will be worth the time.