Just Seven Things

Exploring why and how we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Archive for the category “Focus”

How to Improve Time Management: The Blockers to Focus

Focus by CraigPJ

Focus by CraigPJ

Contrary to popular opinion about multi-tasking being a higher form of skill than the individual who just does one thing at a time, the key to Productivity+Efficiency=Time Management is focus.

Now this is no great revelation: most good time management/ productivity books will highlight focus as being the ‘magic’ ingredient or key to success.

However, until recently I have felt similar sentiments on this to that portrayed in my comment in my post on Mindfulness: Learning in the Task:  ‘I have always challenged that multi-tasking, or at the very least thinking about something else whilst doing the things you can mundanely/ unconsciously do is a higher form of skill. That just focusing utterly and mindfully on one thing is time wasting’

I think that a number of things have shifted in my views. The value of focus is starting to glimmer through the clearing mists of ‘to-do’s’ as my own personal productivity improves. I have identified the following as a ‘starter for ten’ on things that facilitate or block your ability to focus: Read more…

Mindfulness: Learning in the Task

Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj by Asif Akbar

Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj by Asif Akbar

I had a riding lesson today. My family is mad-keen and has been having lessons for many months now. I wanted to go as I look for activities where I can completely lock my focus onto something. Enforced mindfulness I suppose. My colleague Jane and I have had a couple of discussions on the need for a switch off by completely switching onto something else. She gets this switch off relaxation from snowboarding. To paraphrase terribly, I think she said something like ‘you tend to concentrate if you’re hurtling down a hill and likely to kill yourself if you don’t’

Read more…

Strange Bedfellows: The Relationship between Mood and Time Management

Cumulus 4 by Marcin Rybarczyk

Cumulus 4 by Marcin Rybarczyk

Again, it must be where my mind is at the moment. The challenges of time management and personal effectiveness all seem to be appearing in the shadows and the greyness conscious, rational, systematic approaches to the problem.

I think I need to start to believe the statement made in  Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s excellent Fooled by Randomness

‘We will see that we are not genetically fit to be rational and act rationally’ – there is a divorce between those who have ideas and those who carry then out in practice

(Here is the link to the string of posts on the impact that Fooled by Randomness has had on me)

I make this observation as I monitor myself into a next phase of effectiveness. I am getting a lot more focused on My3Things for each of my areas of accountability/ personal vision and goals (I have extended out my own use of the term My3Things from its use within Madgex for 360 degree feedback – just a useful way of managing a ‘dashboard’ of top 3 priority actions over seven areas of accountability/ vision & goals)

Read more…

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