It’s very easy these days to lose focus, slack off and take the back seat.

We’re bombarded with a ton of distractions from emails, phone calls, and all sorts of requests and invitations, and such distractions can prevent us from staying focused and working productively and efficiently.

The most common advice given to people who are struggling with staying focused is “to eliminate distractions.” This advice comes from the belief that people lose focus when other things compete for their attention. So in order to stay focused, as the advice goes, you should control your working space and deflect all distractions.

But while this is a good overall advice, I don’t think it’s enough to help you stay focused. In fact, don’t you find it hard sometimes to stay focused when you’re sitting behind your desk and there are absolutely no distractions whatsoever? Don’t you find it hard to focus on working even when it’s dead silent?

So staying focused is not only a matter of eliminating distractions, but it’s also about finding that sweet spot that can keep you going despite the presence of negative thoughts and feelings.

That sweet spot is a steady momentum.

1. Don’t Peak Too Early

The inability to stay focused stems from a number of different factors like: facing a hard challenge, losing interest, becoming bored, becoming tired, wanting to try other things, being afraid it won’t work out, being afraid of being judged by others, having perfectionists tendencies, feeling a little lazy, procrastinating and postponing your work, and so and so forth. And regardless of the actual reason behind your inability to stay focused, you are in all of these cases experiencing a serious lack of motivation. Having these thoughts and obsessing with them can cripple you from making the progress you desire.

In fact, in any of these mental states, you no longer feel that drive to push yourself further and try new things. You no longer have the patience to see if things will work out for you. Maybe you’ve already given up and you’re now wondering why you quit so easily and so quickly. You may also be wondering why you couldn’t get yourself to remain focused all the way through.

But don’t shame yourself or put yourself down. Every one of us has gone through such an experience. But it’s up to you to choose the kind of outcome you want to focus on: you can either choose to focus on what you’ve learned from that experience and move ahead or you can dwell on the failure and feel stupid.

I chose to learn from failure when I didn’t reach my fitness goals.

When I started out bodybuilding, I didn’t know much about nutrition or working out. I also didn’t know much about losing fat and maintaining muscle, so I went through bouts of extreme dedication and bouts of not wanting to eat the “right” food anymore or go to the gym. So I would go from working out 5 days a week every week for three months to going for two to three months without going to the gym, and then back to going to the gym for a month or two and then stopping again for a month or two. Accordingly, I went back and forth between gaining muscle and losing fat, as well as gaining fat and losing muscle, and it was extremely a de-motivating thing to go through. I just couldn’t seem to get it right and consequently I couldn’t manage to stay focused on reaching my fitness goal.

But here’s the lesson I learned:

I ended up discovering that I couldn’t stay focused because I peaked too early in the process. And what I mean by that is I established a good momentum starting out but because I wanted to see progress at a faster rate, I ended up making bigger leaps and jumps that I lost my momentum and ended up getting off track.

Every time your expectations exceed what you’re able to do, and you start demanding of yourself to do more and at a faster pace, you will inevitably lose your focus. You will get to the point where you’re simply unable to meet your own goals, and you will start experiencing negative thoughts. And you will experience such thoughts without the presence of any real distractions. You’re simply not motivated anymore.

2. Build a Steady Momentum

I really wish I can find a way to get you to accept that in order to stay focused, you need to start with setting goals that you can achieve easily. You have to slowly become comfortable with taking willful action. Give yourself a “warm up” period and work on that goal slowly. And if you’re in the middle of a goal right now and you’re not focused on it anymore, then go back and start working with what you’re comfortable with until you establish a good momentum.

After feeling comfortable with working on an “easy” goal as part of your daily or weekly routine, you can now begin by setting goals that are a little more challenging – but make sure that you can still comfortably do them. Please recognize that if you push yourself too hard, you will lose focus and quit. So give yourself time. You don’t have to become superman from the first month of working on your goal and if you try… well you will quit anyway.

So every time you feel excited about a long term goal, don’t let that excitement get the best of you and sway you into setting massive or excessively demanding goals. Take a deep breath and make a conscious effort to set up easy goals first.

3. Be Okay with Not Being Motivated

You are not going to feel the love for working every single day of your life. Sometimes you won’t feel motivated to go to the gym, or work on certain projects, or build your business. And if you experience such thoughts, don’t try to negate them. If you can accept that you’re going to have bad days and choose to work nonetheless (in a non-resistant way), you will learn to get through this wave and keep your momentum. So think of yourself a surfer: there are going to be some good waves and some bad waves, and if you can keep going through the bad ones, you will have the necessary momentum to enjoy the good ones.