Focus is one thing that did not come easy for me. In fact, I'm pretty sure I have some sort of learning 'disability', if it can even be called that.

What I have learned about focus is; FIND WHAT WORKS FOR YOU. What works for me probably won't work for you, and what works for you probably wont work for me. But at least we can share ideas. Whenever we hear an idea or see a tool that could work, our mind will let us know!

Here's a personal story that gives this proof in my life…

I'm a nail biter. No, I'm not really a nervous person. It's just a habit I've always had. I chew often for no apparent reason.

I've been on this huge personal renaisance lately and this is one thing I wanted to try to take care of. I looked for bittergent products and things that would cover my nails, anything I could think of. But then I just went out search for advice.

I found one blog that was a 40 or so step process. I started reading through the list and hit #10ish. It said, 'work on one nail at a time. You can chew any other nail as much as you want, just not that one!'. Well, how is that for focus? As soon as I saw this tip, my mind went 'BIIIIING!'. I knew I could then do it.

Today I have 6 nails that are in awesome shape. One step at a time, it worked. AND it gets easier as time goes on.

So, that's a personal story…

Now here are some tools I've used recently.

OmmWriter
http://www.ommwriter.com/
This trusty little thing blanks out everything on the screen, but it can also play music and cool typing noises as if the keyboard were making them. It REALLY gets me in the writing zone. It has worked wonders for me.

TeuxDeux
http://teuxdeux.com
There are a lot of task management things out there, but this one I just like. I like that it's on an actual schedule and that the tasks cascade down. I also like that there is a 'sometime' area that shows things I need to do, but they aren't attached to a specific date. This makes it so I don't get overwhelmed.

About tasks: In the Four Hour Work Week, the author Tim Ferriss mentions that as for tasks, you should initially only focus on doing 1 and max 2 things a day. Get those things done NO MATTER WHAT.

This particular set of advice really helped me build my task ninja skills.

This is quite a long comment, so I'll leave it here. Great post. It's been retweeted.

All the best.

Thanks for the plug. I'm getting almost religious about my focus at this point. I'm implementing task lists and not resting till they are done. I'm implementing time limits and cutting out distractions. The next piece is going to be analyzing process flow and completely eliminating things that are not high value by using outsourcing.