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Course description

Notifications, colleagues, a busy head or feelings of stress and anxiety: focusing for a longer period of time on one task is pretty difficult with all these distractions. And that comes with a cost. Feeling more stress, less energy and less satisfaction are the result of continuous task interruptions.

Improving your focus is the key ingredient to better performance, less stress and more satisfaction. It requires a set of measures to get there: not just reducing external distractions, but also taking measures to have a quiet mind. This personal development course will help you improve focus for better performance, more energy and more satisfaction.

Learning objectives

During this course you will learn what focus is. You will gain insight in how focus affects energy, performance and satisfaction. You will understand why continuous task interruptions are detrimental to delivering high quality of work and managing your energy and well-being. You will learn to manage focus and improve your concentration. These measures consist of managing your environment and taking care of your own energy level. In addition, you will learn how to manage your tasks and responsibilities to have a clear mind. And you will learn how to improve your focus muscle: the skill to regain focus when you are distracted.

Instructional method

The course starts with completing a Focus Scan. This scan provides a first insight in the quality of your focus. The group meetings serve to learn and apply all the necessary measures to improve focus. Through education, exercises and peer discussions you will develop a personal plan to start improving your focus to a sustainable level. Furthermore, experiential learning through homework assignments is an essential part of the learning process. The individual outtake serves to discuss how things are going and adjust your plan to individual needs if necessary.

Trainer

Pepijn Lochtenberg
Sportpsycholoog VSPN |

Group size

10 to 14 participants

Number of credits

0.8 EC

Course programme

The course consists a Focus Scan and an individual outtake, plus four group meetings of 3 hours each.

Individual meetings:

• Week 6: Focus Scan
• Week 15-16: individual outtake

Course schedule

Study load

In addition to the scheduled sessions, you should take into account an extra study load of approximately 9 hours in total. This study load generally consists of homework assignments in preparation for the next session.

Course certificate

You will receive a course certificate after actively participating in all course sessions.

Cancellation and No-show policy

This course is free for GSLS PhD candidates. However: free of charge does not mean free of responsibility. Once you have signed up for a course, we expect you to attend. For every late cancellation or no-show we have had to disappoint others who would have liked to attend. This is our policy:

• You may cancel free of charge up to 4 weeks before the start of the course. After this date you can only cancel if you have a GSLS PhD candidate to replace you in the course. Send the name and contact information of your replacement to pcc@uu.nl, at least 2 working days before the start of the course;
• We expect that you actively attend the full course, but at least 80%. It is mandatory to attend the first session. If you are absent the first session you cannot follow the remaining of the course;
• Not meeting the above requirements means you will be charged a no-show fee (€ 175). We will send the invoice after the course has ended. We are unable to make any exceptions, unless you have a valid reason (i.e., illness or death in the family 1^st/2^nd degree or partner). Your supervisor has to send an e-mail to pcc@uu.nl indicating the reason.

Unfortunately we don’t offer this course for participants not part of the GSLS. Our courses tend to be fully booked by GSLS PhD candidates.

I have managed to change my workweek from being busy, working many hours and draining my energy, to a workweek with producing higher quality of work and having enough energy left to exercise and meet friends

I really notice a difference: I have a lot more energy, I am more productive and I experience more satisfaction in the things I do

I had fun, tips were hands-on and directly applicable to my situation