Is your racing mind sabotaging your ability to focus? Are you frustrated and falling behind on crucial tasks? We’ve all been there – trying to concentrate on important tasks while our thoughts drift to that argument with our sister, the pending medical results, or that uncomfortable conversation we need to have.
For many women, especially those working from home or running their own businesses, finding focus when life gets chaotic can feel like an impossible challenge. But what if there were simple strategies you could use today to regain your concentration, even when your world feels like it’s spinning out of control?
In today’s episode, we’re diving deep into a practical, three-step strategy that helps you focus on work even when your mind is racing with worries or personal challenges. You’ll discover a unique approach that goes beyond traditional productivity advice. Instead of fighting against your scattered thoughts, you’ll learn how to acknowledge them while still maintaining your momentum.
In this episode, we cover:
- How fighting against distracting thoughts might actually be making your concentration problems worse
- Why changing your environment isn’t always the answer (and what to do instead when you work from home)
- A simple somatic practice that elite military forces use to stay focused under extreme pressure
- The “box technique” that helps you temporarily store emotional distractions without ignoring them
- How to set realistic “focus intervals” that work with your emotions instead of against them
Life’s many distractions don’t have to derail your workday or destroy your productivity. With these strategies, you can learn to stay focused on work while still honoring your emotions and personal challenges.
Download our free focus guide mentioned in this episode to keep these powerful techniques at your fingertips.
For more daily tips on time and productivity, follow us on Apple Podcasts and leave a review – it helps other ambitious women find the support they need to thrive.
Links & Mentioned Resources
The “box” method for focusing your racing mind – grab the free guide
Connect with Kirsty:
More about The Time & Productivity Podcast for Entrepreneurs
The podcast to help you, as an ambitious high-achieving Type-A woman, master work-life balance as a business owner.
Join Kirsty Knight each week, so she can help you create the level of success you truly desire, in a business that you love, without needing to sacrifice time for yourself, your health, your family, and your enjoyment of life outside of your business. Without hustling, without working yourself into the ground, and without burning out.
Kirsty will be sharing lessons from her own business journey, business strategies, time management and productivity hacks, and the psychology you need to understand – to help you go from overworking and overwhelmed, to mastering your time and productivity, so you can be working less, and earning more.
If you are trying to build or scale your business, but find yourself struggling with overwhelm, self-sabotage, procrastination, distractions, perfectionism, people-pleasing, hustling, overworking and always thinking “there just aren’t enough hours in the day”, this podcast is for you.
You CAN have it all. And she’s going to show you how.
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of the The Time & Productivity Podcast for Entrepreneurs
Good morning lovelies, how are you today? So todays episode I want to talk to you about how to get your head back in the game, and how to concentrate and focus on the work you need to get done in your business, when your mind is spinning out on something else, or when your mind is racing about something.
Maybe you’ve had a row with your other half. Or a disagreement with your family. Or maybe something your kid has done has triggered you. Or maybe something is going on In the world that is making you worried or anxious. Or maybe you’ve got some health niggles that you are wanting to get checked out. Maybe you’re waiting on some test results, or maybe you’ve even had a recent diagnosis you are reeling over and trying to figure out. Whatever is going on, is making it incredibly difficult to stay focused in your business.
So how do you solve for it? Particularly if you work from home, you have an online business and you are your own boss – you don’t have a change of environment to snap you out of life mode and into work mode. You don’t have colleagues who are taking your mind off it. Or the pressure of deadlines and a boss. Or even in-person appointments to get you focused on the work.
So let’s talk about it.
First of all I think we have to consider that you may have alternative options that you want to consider, before you decide you have to or you want to push through regardless. And make yourself focus regardless.
For example, it may be that there is a solution you could put in place right now, that would actually make you feel better and help you get back to work mode if you just did it first.
Maybe you know that once you have a conversation and say what you need to say, you will be able to let it go.
Maybe you know if you just ring up for your test results now, rather than after you’ve done your content, you’ll feel so much better.
Maybe you know that communicating a simple boundary is all you need in order to move on.
That might be the best strategy for you, to be able to focus on your work later.
Alternatively, maybe there isn’t a solution that will fix anything right now, but you want to and can give yourself a bit of space and time to process how you are feeling. To honour how you are feeling. Maybe you don’t need to worry about getting your work done in this moment.
Maybe that – giving yourself permission to take some time away from your business is the quickest way and best way to get yourself back in the game and focused again.
Or maybe you do just want and need to push through. If your life is one big constant barrage of conflicts, and disagreements, and rows and anxieties, and health issues, and worrying circumstances, then maybe you need to just learn how to focus on work even with the chaos going on around you. That’s fine too, that’s what I’m here for.
But if this is why you want to do that, and have to do that, I would also check in to see if there are some circumstances we can change, maybe some boundaries we can set, or some solutions we can work on implementing so that your life can give you a bit of a breather sometimes.
So I just wanted to first share that you have other options, because often you do – pushing through regardless is not your only option, and sometimes it’s not the best option for you. And I want you to always honour what is right for you.
But with that being said, let’s move on to a strategy that you can use to focus on work, even when your mind is racing- for whatever reason.
So the first thing you have to do, if you’ve decided you just need to get some work done and you need to concentrate, Step 1 – is normalise the struggle.
Normalise it and accept it. Because this takes some of the kick out of the challenge.
When we argue against our reality. When we fight the fact that our mind is racing, and we are having all of these thoughts and feelings about whatever is going on outside of our business, we actually add a layer of frustration and annoyance and resistance to what we are already experiencing – so it amplifies it somewhat.
It’s a bit like if you’ve ever tried meditating and you keep having thoughts pop into your head. If you get annoyed about the fact that your brain is offering you thoughts you are not going to get into that zen state that you want to be in. You want to, instead, just allow them to be there, notice them and let them pass by.
Or if you’ve ever been struggling to fall asleep and you start looking at the clock to see how much time you have left before you have to get up – you make it worse, and harder to fall asleep than just accepting it is what it is, you will fall asleep when you do.
So we want to accept that it is normal – we are emotive beings – we have thoughts about things – we have a survival instinct that is strong – and so if anything feels like it’s threatening that – like an illness, or a dangerous situation in the world – of course we are going to be thinking things, and feeling anxious. We have a strong desire and need for connection – so of course when we have disagreements with our loved ones, we get upset about it. Of course it is going to be hard for us to concentrate when things are affecting us like that.
So Step 1 is to normalise and accept it. And I like to do this by just simply narrating/describing our experience and adding “of course” at the beginning of it, and the phrase “it’s normal” at the end. Of course I am feeling angry because I had a row with my sister. It’s normal. Of course I am feeling worried because there is a pandemic. It’s normal. Of course, my mind is racing because I was in a conflict with someone on the road. It’s normal. Whatever it is. We describe how we are feeling, what is going on. And we say it to ourselves like we would be reassuring a friend.
And as you do that, you should already start to feel a little bit better, a little bit calmer.
The second step then, to help us get to the point where we can focus on our business work – despite what else is going on – is to downregulate your nervous system. So downregulating your nervous system is the process of shifting your nervous system from a fight-or-flight state to a rest-and-digest state. It’s a way to calm your body and quiet your mind.
If we don’t do this BEFORE we try to focus on our work, you are going to be fighting an uphill battle.
But before you do them I want you to check in with your body and rate on a scale of 1-10 how stressed, or anxious, or fired up you are – 10 being extremely, 1 being totally zenlike.
And then there are a number of somatic practices that you can do to downregulate your nervous system and that I use with my clients to help do this. I’m just going to offer a couple of different ones here. So one is to do some breathwork. So a simple breathing exercise – called box breathing – where you inhale for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, exhale for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4 and repeat. Now it’s super easy and super simple – not rocket science but don’t discredit it because of that – The SAS use it to calm themselves in the middle of their missions so if it’s good enough for them, it should be good enough for you.
Another one you can use is The 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique. So this is a mindfulness exercise that will help you manage that anxiety and stress. It involves using the five senses to focus on the present moment and break the cycle of anxious thoughts:
- 1. See
Look around and name five things you can see. - 2. Touch
Focus on four things you can feel, such as the chair you’re sitting on or the feel of your clothes. - 3. Hear
Name three things you can hear, such as people outside or the wind blowing. - 4. Smell
Notice two things you can smell, such as a flower, the smell of your clothes, or the shampoo in your hair. - 5. Taste
Focus on one thing you can taste, or your favorite thing to taste if you can’t taste anything.
Another technique you can use is bilateral stimulation – so take an object in your right hand, bring your right arm out to the side 90 degrees, and then pass the object to the front of you and as it passes your midline, pass it to the left hand, bring your left hand out 90 degrees from your body, then bring it back to the front of your body, and as it passes your midline, pass it back to your right hand – so you are swinging it from side to side, passing it from the left to the right to the left then to the right – and this engages both sides of your brain – which helps disrupt any craziness going on in one spot in there.
So any of these will help calm your nervous system down – they will help calm your sympathetic nervous system and activate the parasympathetic nervous system instead.
Once you’ve done that – and as many times as you need – check in again with that scale – of how stressed, or anxious, or fired up you are – repeat them more times if it still hasn’t come down – or if it’s dropped on the scale, and you are feeling more calm, move to Step 3.
So step 3 is this – I want you to close your eyes and imagine your scenario that is stressing you out or making your mind race as a symbol. Or a metaphor of some kind. So if you are feeling trapped by someone – maybe when you close your eyes you see a ball and chain. Or if you are having a row with someone, maybe you imagine an angry goblin. It can be anything that comes to mind. And then whatever comes to mind, I want you to imagine shrinking it to the size of an apple. And then I want you to imagine that to your left is one of those cardboard boxes – that people archive old files in. And you are going to pick up that metaphor or object or symbol – whatever you have – and drop it into that box. And then you are going to imagine you can pull out of your temple a stream of consciousness all about that thing – a bunch of thoughts you have about it, whatever emotions you have about it – and you are going to pop them inside the box too. And then you are going to put the lid on. And then you’re going to grab a marker and write on the outside of the box, that it will stay closed while you do X (X is the thing you need to get done, focus on) and then you’re going to write on it a time where you can open it up and deal with the contents inside. And when you do this – you aren’t going to say a time that is unrealistic or a task that is crazy – you are going to say something like – this one email needs to get written and then we can open it up again in 25 minutes. Or this sales page is going to be drafted out, and we can open it up again in one hour. Think of it like you would if you were out running – and struggling – you aren’t going to say keep going you only have to pass 100 more lampposts then you can stop, you are going to say, let’s just run to the next lamppost. And then we can take a ten second break.
And then you are going to get to work on that thing you’ve committed to, until that time. ANd you are going to allow any urges that come up to dive into that box again, you are just going to let them pass you buy. You can make a note of any thoughts you are afraid you might forget on a piece of paper – but you can’t indulge in one after the other. And you go back to your task. And you keep doing that – knowing that box is closed. We aren’t actively thinking about the contents of it – until the task is done and the time is up.
And then once you’ve finished that task, and the time is up, you can give yourself permission to open the box again and ruminate some more. Give yourself five minutes of doing that. And then go back to Step 1. “Of course I’m still annoyed by xyz. It’s normal”. Step 2 – do some box breathing. Calm yourself down again. Step 3 – close your eyes and imagine the metaphor – pop in the box, decide what you are getting done next and what time you can open it back up. And go again.
Now this sounds crazy, right – like will that even work. It works amazingly well for me and my clients. So I want you to try it out. The next time you are struggling to focus because you’ve had a row with your sister and you can’t stop ruminating on what you wish you’d said – but you need to also focus on getting your podcast episode done. Give yourself short bursts where you focus. And then release. Focus and then release. And you will be able to move your business forward even when your mind is in complete chaos.
Let me know how you get on – make sure you download the podcast guide that comes with this episode so you have it on hand next time you need to focus – so you have the steps and know what to do – and I hardly ever ask for podcast reviews on here – but if you are finding these episodes useful, I’d be so grateful if you could just leave me a couple of sentences to say that. It helps other people find the help they need in their business with their time and productivity.
That’s it for this week peeps. See you next time
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