The Harvard Business school did some research on how we can be more productive while working.

When we search for anything online, we typically have to sift through pages of information, some relevant but most not. And often, we’ll start out by searching for one thing and then bump into something even more intriguing and veer off in that direction. We often repeat this pattern many times. Before you know it, the search for “tickets to Hawaii” that you started at 8 pm has morphed into a search of “great battleships of the Pacific” by 10 pm…then “movies by Stanley Kubrick” at 11…and so on ad nauseam. Meanwhile, your wife is angry because you promised to help your son with his homework hours ago and everything else you had planned that evening didn’t get done, such as responding to your sister’s text, friending your old college buddy on Facebook, and responding to someone who flamed you in their forum. You may ask yourself, well…how did I get here?

1. Sleep well: A well-rested brain is less likely to be distracted.
2. Eat well: Good nutrition is important to brain functionality.
3. Minimize stress and anger: it tends to ramp up production of brain chemicals such as norepinephrine and cortisol, which can lead to problems.
4. Watch out for time wasters: It’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole while reading blogs (except this one of course) or online forums. Stay focused by setting time limits for online activity.
5. Work smarter, not longer: If you’re working too hard or long hours without a break, your brain will seek out diversions at some point — whether you want it to or not. Schedule breaks in advance; you’re better off putting in six productive hours than of 10 hours of mindless search engine trolling or social networking.

http://shar.es/aaPMp

‘ Nothing kills startups like distractions. The worst type are those that pay money: day jobs, consulting, profitable side-projects. The startup may have more long-term potential, but you’ll always interrupt working on it to answer calls from people paying you now.

Calling ALL entrepreneurs!! This is such a true statement for me and I’ve heard this is the trend for most other entrepreneurs. Like musicians, we have to constantly be thinking over the next best thing while still paying the bills with the recent gig. Where does distraction begin to take part of the failing of a business? Dr. Jeff Cornwall is always getting on to me for not focusing because he mentioned to me that he too struggled with this and wants me to begin to develop this skill. It’s not that I don’t listen to him but I do have trouble with distractions.

At the age of 22, I’ve launched five companies with positive cash flows. If I focus on one of these will I be more successful than if I slowly grew the other four? This is my current struggle / drive to find the answer. I think a point to make here is that all of the businesses require greater attention than others. For instance, I’m partnering with an online wedding guide site that only needs to be checked up on every couple of days but it’s still providing some extra cash. If I were to invest 30 extra hours a week into this site would the business grow – Well I think so. But we’re also running a high end video company that is producing a much higher cash income so my focus remains with this company while still giving minor attention to the others.

Last point to make: Team building and prioritizing might be the solution toward running 4-5 successful businesses. If you can delegate certain duties within these businesses that can be watched and developed, I think that the companies can survive and grow at a healthy rate.