Focus: Transforming Overwhelm into Efficiency
In a world filled with endless choice, opportunity, and instant communication, we manage plates too full, run on auto-pilot, and multi-task to keep our heads above water. In our effort to “get it done”, we have lost the joy of the process, leaving many things, ironically, incomplete. Yet, research has shown that focus is an essential ingredient to leading a successful and fulfilled life. How then do we build and cultivate the quality of focus?
Make Decisions and Stick to Them
Breakdowns in focus often occur before we begin. We skip the very foundation necessary for true focus to exist – making a conscious decision and then sticking to it. This includes everything from choosing our life’s work and determining the priorities for our teams, down to clarifying what we will accomplish in a given day. Focus begins with setting intentions, declaring our commitments, and then acting directly from these. While decisions are not locked in stone, there is value to making them, sticking to them, and then consciously adjusting them when need be. Conscious adjustment is different than consistent indecision and worry.
A client, Susan, struggled for many years with focus before settling into her current role as a principal in a marketing-services firm. “I’ve always been interested in many things that it has been hard to choose a career path – even now, I find myself distracted wondering if I should be following my life’s passion of working in non-profit.”
Eliminate/Manage Distractions
Maintaining focus is not only hard on the big decisions in life but also difficult in our daily lives as well. After two weeks of self-observation, Susan uncovered two key sources of “focus saboteurs”. First, unexpected requests from other people, which she usually responded to immediately, interrupted her flow of work. Second, she became conscious of how frequently she responded to email to procrastinate on high priority work that she either did not enjoy or required a significant chunk of “thinking time” to complete.
Create Systems & Structure
Armed with her patterns, Susan experimented with new systems to support her focus. She created a “filtering” system for handling the influx of requests. She blocked two early morning “work chunks” when her energy was highest for reflective time for her higher priority strategic work and administrative responsibilities she did not enjoy. More difficult was designating times to respond to email in blocks versus answering each one as they came in. Her biggest breakthrough came when she realized she would revisit her larger life question of career path at periodic points in the year with greater consciousness (versus having it “buzz” in the background) and be engaged with her current work on a daily basis.
Cultivate the Quality of Focus
Short-term, structures and systems can support our focus, but ultimately we must cultivate the quality of our focus for highest impact. This involves shifting the hard-wiring in our bodies filled with anxiety, tension, and “pushing” to flow, attentiveness, and presence when engaged in an activity. Quality of focus ensures that when we are working on a document, we’re fully engaged in the process. When we’re with our families, then we are fully present with them versus thinking about work deliverables.
Cultivating this quality of focus requires slowing down, engaging in meditative practices designed to build awareness and attention, and quieting ourselves enough to really “hear” what we want. Susan learned that the big paradox in all of this was that by actually slowing herself down, she became more efficient – now eliminating many things on her list that were there because she lacked focus in the first place.
Reflection Questions:
Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.” –Wikipedia Encyclopedia
As we nurture the quality, style, and attitude of our focus – we begin to experience greater flow with life – we swim with the current of our lives, versus against it, with greater ease, confidence, and contentment. We use and replenish our energy, accept what is there, and literally “go with the flow”.
- In what area of your life would having greater focus benefit you?
- Throughout your day, what distracts you from your highest priorities or intentions?
- Throughout your day, what conditions were in place when you experienced great focus or flow?
- What new systems, structures, or practices could further support your ability to focus?
– Amy Jen Su