16 easy ways to improve your focus in the age of coronavirus

• Humans have a short attention span. This can make it difficult to get work done.
• Petr Ludwig, a productivity expert and author of "The End of Procrastination," told Business Insider that to increase your focus you must improve your ability to say "no" and develop intrinsic motivation, or, in other words, drive that is developed internally.
• We've rounded up a list of strategies that will help keep your focus.
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Americans have about an eight-second attention span.

That's less than a goldfish.

But we can improve our powers of concentration by, for example, finding clever ways to eliminate distractions, hacking our workflows, or working on our mindsets.

Petr Ludwig, author of "The End of Procrastination," a book offering strategies for productivity, told Business Insider that intrinsic motivation, or the drive that comes internally for a project, is a key element to staying on track.

"If we don't see a purpose in our activities, then we feel disconnected, and we postpone those tasks," Ludwig said. "If you use your strengths on a daily basis ... at the end you procrastinate much less and you are more fulfilled."

To that end, here are a few takeaways from Quora threads and a productivity expert that tackle attention.

Not sleeping enough makes people distracted, fat, and unethical, so be sure to get your rest. While everybody's needs are different, it's generally between six to nine hours. And invest in some nice sheets. -Yishan Wong

Harvard Medical School has found that exercise improves your memory and concentration. You don't have to be a Channing Tatum, but it's important that your body is an asset, not a liability. -Achintya Prakash

Close email, Facebook, Twitter. Put your phone on airplane mode. Turn off anything that blinks, dings, buzzes, or vibrates. Don't even give yourself the chance to multitask - since it erodes your attention span. -Bill Hall

"If you turn off all notifications, then you are much more focused than when you are restricted every five minutes or 10 minutes by a new Instagram or Facebook message," Ludwig said. "Improving focus is quite crucial these days."

If you sleep, work, and relax at irregular intervals, you'll spend unnecessary energy trying to organize your time. Like French novelist Gustave Flaubert said, "Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work." -Frederick Javalera

Taking its name from a Pomodoro timer, which runs for 25 minutes, the Pomodoro technique is a practice of focusing intently on something for 25 minutes and then taking a five-minute break to get coffee, go to the bathroom, whatever. -Selene Chew

The regularity lets your hormones get into a rhythm, giving you the most energy, clarity, and focus through the morning. -Michal Ugor

Is your job to be on top of things - to respond to everything as quickly as possible? Or does it require long hours of studying and concentration? If the latter, email might remain urgent, but it's not important. So only check it a few times a day. -Xi Cheng

If you don't know what they are, read a good book on the subject (BI's favorite: "Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi). Because when you know what you want to do, it's easier to not do everything else. -Rolfe Dlugy-Hegwer

It takes "emotional labor" to do work that you don't engage with, so try to arrange your work day around that engagement, and hack it when it's not there. -George Mortimer

It helps you identify what you actually need to get done. -Dan Webster

You'll come back to it quicker and with more energy. Like Ernest Hemingway said, always "leave some water in the well." -Pratik Mhatre

Not only do they reduce noise, they signal to your colleagues that you're not to be bothered. -Dave Concannon

Teaming up with a coworker will keep you accountable - if she's coding while you're checking Facebook, you'll feel foolish.

It will train you in paying attention to an object for an extended length of time - something the digital world doesn't provide very well. -Murali Veeraiyan

It helps you stay in your workflow, since the sound occupies the part of your brain on the lookout for "danger, food, sex, or shiny things." -Amir Baer

Then, instead of having vague goals, set clear deadlines. Execute against those to guide your focus. -Farsheed Atef

According to Ludwig, when we have too many priorities on our plate, we face decision paralysis, or in other words, we feel overwhelmed and push off a task until later. Instead, he advised people to cut larger projects into smaller bits.

"Complexity increases procrastination," Ludwig said. "Then we have chaos. We have a higher rate of the stress hormone, cortisol, and it's going to undermine our productivity."

The easiest way to put these skills into practice is to reject non-urgent tasks.

"It's often about the courage to say no," he said. "Basically, if you get 50 emails, those 50 emails are not about your priorities. They are mostly about the priorities of others."