Just Seven Things

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

Archive for the tag “Focus”

18 Oct 2008

Is Technology Driving Us all to Distraction?

I was taking notes from a Sunday Times article I’d snipped a while back with the above title. It was by Dominic Rushe and explored a book by Edward Hallowell called ‘Crazybusy – Overstretched, Overbooked and about to Snap’

One sentence in particular struck me: ‘if you are driving and you are lost, the first thing you do is turn down the radio because you need to concentrate. Why do we think it’s different at work?’

And then: ‘the harder work is thinking, not the collecting of information’

It resonated a lot with things that have struck me about the way my mind works when I’m trying to focus. The siren call of ‘interesting’ distractions is vast. The peripheral noise of quick-hit, but ultimately lower return work is material compared to the clarity of, but endurance required to achieve, the longer term focused goal or objective.

I was even struck while running that because physically we’re more used to moving towards a destination, it may be hard work, but we cover a lot of ground. We don’t run round in small circles or from point to point, stopping and starting (unless we’re just starting running……..!)

It’s probably a questionable analogy, but it works for me. I want my work life to all be about the 90 minute runs to my pre-determined destination (with the radio turned down…)

Posted in Focus, Mindfulness, Stress and tagged Concentration, Focus, Single Mindedness | Leave a comment

07 Oct 2008

The Power of Focus (how many times?) and AA Principles…

The Last Drop by Zsuzsanna Kilián

I apologise profusely for being a broken record on this. As a colleague today said in the kitchen at Madgex ‘Well of course, focus is the key to life’.

You can get a sense of the level of the conversation when I’d been suggested that we pull together a group of (we thought) similarly self-aware individuals who were all struggling with the same problem: the consistent management of their attention. I suggested we use the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous in terms of peer/group support and create our own steps for ‘recovery’.

The whole theory of it being a ‘recovery’ however really brought it home to me what a holy grail/ key to life it is. For me it fits as follows. In a pre-dawn moment at the weekend I brainstormed the following under the heading: ‘Observations, realities and reminders’

• MY CONTROL OF MY ATTENTION WILL be my lifetime USP/ core competence
• Deliberate practice is the only way that life gets easier
• Mindfulness and self awareness are the cornerstones to my future success
• Deliberate, clear and constantly referred to goals are at the heart of the engine room of effort
• Focus and consistent, persistent hard work takes a crazy amount of effort
• I only achieve through hard work and constant endeavour
• Deliberate focus on efficiency, volumes and throughput is the only way to get better faster
• A driver of hard work and persistence should be time for the creation of creative/ pleasure/ research

I decided just to put these out there in this post without any further explanation as my stake in the ground/ hat in the ring of what I intend to achieve in the short-term of my life

Posted in Action Orientation, Control, Focus, Mindfulness, Time Management and tagged Attention, Focus, Goals, Mindfulness, Time Management | Leave a comment

15 Sep 2008

Time Management Progress in Action

I was prompted by a comment on one of my posts from June (J7T was just 19 days old) about how hard time management was. It made me stand back and evaluate how far I’ve come in just over three months (and particularly after a 7/10 level day in terms of stress and task bittiness as I travelled between appointments):

I feel more relaxed control (and a clearly ring-fenced idea of where there is a diminishing pile of ‘stuff’ to clear through the GTD system
I am significantly better at locking down my focus to a task in hand. To switch and give it my full thinking attention. Ironically, writing this blog (with the aim of posting at least 5/7 days a week) has improved this ability
I have a more flexible approach to prioritisation based on trust of my systems and reaction to a gut response. This opposed to the constant prioritising and re-prioritising trap that it is sometimes easy to get into
My sense of ‘someday/maybe’ or just ‘ruthless task deletion’ has improved. I feel like I know myself better and cull those things that will just sit for years on front-of-mind task lists and create noise.
I (as posted on recently) am a lot better at just doing the action. Just getting on and starting without messing around.

And the main area for improvement?

As WorkLoadMaster states in his comment to my post on the ‘Stress of Time Management’ above: it’s all about keeping on top of the system. I feel like my report card would say:

‘Si has shown much improvement over the term. With continuing effort and focus he should continue to improve……’