Does this scenario sound familiar?
You enthusiastically start your day with a long list of priorities. You feel awake and focussed and ready to have a productive day. You think to yourself “I’ll just check my email quickly to see if there’s anything urgent.”
Tick-tock. Suddenly it’s lunch time and you haven’t done anything on your to-do list.
Sadly, this is a common phenomena. It’s one I recognise in myself before I started practicing mindful productivity. And it’s not one that’s going to go away. The amount of email we are consuming rises 10-20% each year but the ability of our brain to cope with increasing information is still playing catch up. And it’s not just email. The modern worker has a myriad of distractions to deal with from the phone to social media to instant messaging.
So, how do we actually get any work done?
Let me share with you 3 tips for practising The Art of Focus:
- Do one thing at a time.
- Minimise distractions.
- Manage your energy.
1. Do one thing at a time.
As human beings we think we are brilliant at multi-tasking. In fact any job description will usually look for multi-tasking as an essential attribute in a candidate.
But humans are not like computers. On a typical PC, the operating system can move quickly from task to task but human beings don’t function the same way. We think we are multitasking BUT actually we are SWITCHTASKING which has implications for using up the energy in our brain faster than doing one thing at a time. The more we attempt to do things in parallel, the more energy we invest in switching tasks and juggling.
Research has shown that multitasking is an extremely ineffective way to work. In 2007, in a study of a group of Microsoft workers, they took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, such as writing reports or computer code, after dealing with incoming email, as they wandered off to reply to other messages or browse the Web.
Action: Try this for today. Do one thing at a time and complete it before moving onto the next task.
2. Minimise distractions.
We live in the age of distraction.
Research shows that 28% of our day is wasted on interruptions that are not urgent or important and the time is takes to get focussed again – an average of 2.1 hours each day.
When you want to get focussed work done, you have to cut out your distractions. Literally TURN THEM OFF! Put your phone on silent, sign out of your instant messaging service, do not open your inbox and don’t event think of looking at Twitter or Facebook.
The urge to switch tasks will come. Something will catch your attention or you will become frustrated/bored with the task at hand. But we don’t have to be slaves to our brain impulses. The wonderful thing about human beings is that we have the capacity for choice; we can feel the tantalizing pull of the inbox or our social media and choose to ignore it.
Action: Try going half a day with no distractions and see what a difference this makes to your productivity.
3. Manage your energy.
All time is not created equal.
There are times in the day when you work brilliantly and times when you would be better off having a nap under your desk. Be aware of your energy patterns and when you work best. Ring fence this golden time for your focussed work.
Action: Spend a day being aware of your energy patterns. When do you work best? When are tired and unfocussed?
Do let me know in the comments how you get on with these actions.
