I Supernanny’d Myself

Have you ever seen the Supernanny Jo Frost give a time out to a small child? She basically sets the amount of time, say 1 minute, and then places the child into the time-out location. Every time the child moves, the timer is reset as the child is placed back into the location. She will do this as many times as she needs to until the child gets the idea.

While my problem may not be drawing on the wall in crayon or hitting my little brother, I have decided to use her technique of refocus in my own life. You see, I have chronically multitasked myself out of the ability to focus on one thing, and now I actually have to retrain myself to focus again. We have been told to meditate for 15 minutes as part of the Adventures in Manifesting program, but to be quite honest I suck at it. If I can’t make it through a single on-page article, how am I going to control my mind for 15 minutes?

This is my approach:

• When I am doing something, I am going to do only that thing.
• If something else comes in, I will resist the urge to click off the current screen until that thing is done. (Hopefully this will also cure me of windowitis because I constantly have 30 half-read browser windows open.)
• If my body starts to tense up as my mind moves on to other things, I will close my eyes, focus on one 4-count inhale, hold for 2 seconds, focus on a 4-count exhale, and open my eyes again. Then I will get back to what I was doing.
• I will remind myself to stay present to be more productive.
• I will stop skipping ahead and skimming. If it is important enough to read, I will read it. If not, I will skip it.

How do you stay focused?