Sometimes it feels impossible to focus at work. Whether it's constant news alerts popping up on your phone or a busy time in your personal life, stress, emotions and outside distractions can make it hard to ensure you're knocking off your to-dos.

Luckily, there are various tactics to reel you back into what you need to be doing, "especially at this time when we're completely overwhelmed and unfocused," says happiness expert Jessica Weiss.

Here are three tricks she recommends trying.

Give 'your body the chance to feel'

To begin with, dedicate some time in the day to simply feel your feelings.

Weiss recommends 15 to 20 minutes of worry time, anger, frustration — whatever you're feeling. It's "the way that you'll actually be able to move through the emotion," she says, instead of holding it in.

That can happen any time of day. "Some people wake up in the morning and they're kind of overwhelmed by anxiety," she says. Some people reach peak anxiety midday, others toward the end. Carve out those 15-to-20 minutes whenever that peak is for you.

In terms of how to process your emotions in that window, try talking to someone who you know will listen. Journaling is another good option for getting them out. And exercise can also help you expunge and release. "The primary idea here is to get the ideas out of our physical body and into the world," says Weiss.

'Focus on the stuff that you can control'

When you're actually working, Weiss recommends you "focus on the stuff that you can control," she says.

Which is to say, focus on tasks "that you have autonomy and agency over," she says, rather than those that depend on other people to move forward. Shifting your energy toward work you can control "reduces anxiety and it also increases how satisfied you are with your life," she says.

Similarly, instead of thinking big picture about everything you have to do, focus on "small wins."

"Instead of saying to yourself, 'oh, I need to hit this huge sales quota by X date,'" says Weiss, "how about you say to yourself, 'I need to make five sales calls a day,'" or some other comparable list of small tasks. The point is to set "a goal that's attainable and makes you feel accomplished at the end of the day," she says.

Get into a flow state

Finally, carve out some time to get into your flow state, or a level of focus in which you become completely immersed in the activity you're doing and perhaps even lose track of time. Weiss recommends dedicating one to two hours per day to it.

In this window of time, "pick a task that's slightly more difficult than something that you would ordinarily do, eliminate distractions" and set a clear goal for the end of that time. You want to pick something that will "slightly push you out of your comfort zone," as opposed to something easy.

Giving yourself two hours to be heads down on an activity that challenges you "brings us that sense of satisfaction," says Weiss, "and it'll kind of remind you of your ability to concentrate, which I think is what we all need in those moments when we're like, 'oh my God, I can't focus.'"

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