If there’s one complaint I hear most often from clients, it’s this:
“I know what I want, but I can’t seem to stay focused long enough to make it happen.”
Does this sound familiar? Know that you are not alone. In today’s world distractions are on the rise. Our emails, social media notifications, endless to-do lists, and the pull of other people’s needs are a regular part of our daily routines. For entrepreneurial women especially, focus can feel like a moving target. When we are juggling a business, relationships, health, and a bigger vision, our brain can feel like it’s running with a dozen tabs open at once, slowing everything down to a snail’s pace.
The problem isn’t that we lack drive or ambition. It’s that our nervous system and environment are working in opposition to our search for focus.
Why Focus Feels So Hard
Our brain isn’t coded for productivity; it’s programmed for protection. When stressors arise, the nervous system runs a “threat scan” pulling us out of flow. The end result is often feelings of overwhelm, procrastination, and the “scatterbrain.”
On top of that, modern distractions are engineered to hijack our attention. Every ping, ding, and pop-up acts like malware, pulling us out of our deep work. This burns up valuable bandwidth. We look really busy but we are not being productive.
Emotional load also creates invisible noise. Our own self-doubt, the pressure of “not being enough,” and the weight of responsibilities drain our power banks. Even if we are sitting at a desk and staring at a screen, our mind is still running multiple background programs. This sucks energy and productivity.
Why Anger and Deadlines Sometimes Work
Many clients tell me: “I can’t focus unless I’m angry or the deadline is right on top of me.”
That’s because adrenaline and cortisol, our stress responders, act like an emergency override, forcing us to focus in tunnel vision. It’s equivalent to running our processor at a higher than recommended speed; it’s great for a quick burst, but it overheats the system, drains our energy and leaves us burnt out and depleted.
The Truth About Focus
We don’t need to wait for stress chemistry or crisis mode to kick in. Focus doesn’t have to entail waiting for the pressure to build or depending on a last-minute panic response. Instead, think of focus as an upgrade to our operating system:
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Reset the system. Learn to take short pauses, the benefits of breath work, or the strength of Neurolinguistic anchors to reboot, clear out our mental RAM and restore our optimal processing speed.
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Design the environment. We can batch emails, silence notifications, and run timed sprints of productivity. Think of it as closing the windows on your desktop until only the program you need is running.
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Anchor the “why.” When tasks align with our bigger vision, they compile smoothly. Focus stops being a bug to fix and becomes a feature of purpose.
Reclaiming Focus
Reclaiming our focus isn’t about pushing harder or waiting for panic to kick in. It can be about learning to access clarity whenever we need it. We can debug those distractions, optimize our environment, and rewrite old mental scripts to take back control of our attention. When we master focus, we shift from scattered to strategic, steady, sustainable momentum.
This helps you to build a business and a life that run smoothly, with you in the driver’s seat.
Simone Usselman-Tod CCP, TICC, RMT, CEBP
The Goal Accelerator Coach
