Just Seven Things

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

Archive for the tag “Focus”

16 Aug 2008
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Thrashing and Power of Focus: the simple truth

Power by dfu

Power by dfu

Nothing has struck me more since I began my pursuit of self-development a few years ago, than the apparent power of focus.

Struck about ten years ago with a real curiosity about the qualities and benefits of mindfulness within Buddhism, it feels like part of the end game for a lot of self-development challenges includes the ability to master the power of focus to the best of your abilities.

With my ‘simple mind’ investigations that I am now undertaking, I am now struck by the double-challenge of that mastery:

1. To be able to focus is a challenge in itself. I always remember a quote where someone said that the secret of their success was their ability to concentrate single-mindedly on one matter with absolute focus (for something crazily short like 15 minutes (would love to get this correctly sourced…..)

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Posted in Action Orientation, Conscious and Unconscious, Control, Focus, Habits and Routines, Mindfulness, Psychology, Stress and tagged , , , , ,
08 Aug 2008

The Revelation of Micro Task Planning and Thinking?


Life in Detail 2 by Nate Brelsford

Life in Detail 2 by Nate Brelsford

 

I was struck today by the power of planning. Not planning of your life goals: the goal setting and vision lifeblood of success. No: micro planning of the very task that you’re just about to do.

I think we’re so used to what we know how to do; our routines and our learnt ways of doing things. We probably know how to do most things that we come upon in our average work day. We think we know the ‘best ways’ of doing most of the things that we do on a daily/ weekly and monthly basis.
It’s interesting that when ‘cost’ or ‘efficiency’ consultants go into businesses, the things that would need to change to optimise a process are so simple; and afterwards so obvious. The ‘way we do it’ in both personal and business life becomes so ingrained we often don’t even think to think. And we rarely challenge it.
 

 

Blockers feel like they arise in our ability to achieve new things or do new tasks because:

1.       Confidence is sometimes an issue

2.       We are unused to thinking (or stopping to think)

3.       We are unused to intelligently planning on a practical basis

It feels like we are so built to be responsive [link to article] that we are destined to respond poorly to new situations because of this lack of micro-planning.

What do I mean by micro-planning? I’m thinking about:

·         Taking a short period of time to brainstorm the elements of the task you need to do

·         Thinking about a realistic sequence

·         Resources

·         Restraints

·         Other people

·         Timeframes

But most importantly, taking the time to think…

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Posted in Action Orientation, Focus and tagged , , | Leave a comment
02 Aug 2008
1 Comment

Balance between Focus and Multi-tasking II

Lens by Craig Jewell

Lens by Craig Jewell

I wrote a piece on the balance between Focus and Multi-tasking in which I was challenging my own views (and the views of a number of personal productivity systems) on the value of multi-tasking.

I also wrote a piece last week on leaders learning skills from their teams.

These two sets of thoughts were fused marvellously at the end of this week when I was holding one of my six-monthly catch ups with one of the Madgex team where they can get anything off their chest that they haven’t managed to do in any other way.

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Posted in Action Orientation, Conscious and Unconscious, Focus, Habits and Routines, Leadership, Mindfulness, Time Management and tagged , , , , ,

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