It’s Tuesday afternoon, 5.39 pm.
Idle at the desk I’m swivelling in my chair, doing a mental stocktake of what’s been achieved.
A mix of mild irritation and annoyance set in. I’ve either overestimated what I could get done or maybe I’m off today.
Either way, I don’t feel good about my day's work.
On further introspection later that evening I found myself pondering. Was it that I didn’t get to everything on the list today or was it more that the things that really mattered didn’t get done? I look back through the plan. The one big, meaty, needle-moving action didn’t get any love at all.
Not one single moment of my time.
The following morning, curious about my own shortcomings, I google ‘how to be more focussed’ and after a bit of digging through search results, I came across something quite interesting from the famed organisational psychologist and author, Adam Grant. I paraphrase a bit here, but the gist of it is this;
Being prolific at getting sh*t done is not about time management. You need to get way better at attention management: TLDR: Improve your focus towards the people and projects that move you forward, and it won’t matter how long anything takes.
Okay so what the heck is attention management?
Well as described by Grant, “it’s the art of focusing on getting things done for the right reasons, in the right places and at the right moments”.
Right reasons, Right places, Right moments
So let’s dig into this a little bit. Your reason for doing a task (and how focused and productive you’ll be) largely comes down to your reasons for doing it in the first place. Take this blog post as an example. I struggled to get rolling, it’s been on my to-do list for 3 days. This morning when I finally made a start the spark that kicked it off was thinking about how it might help others who are struggling with focus too and that was enough to get it moving in the right direction.
If productivity is your goal, you have to rely on willpower to push yourself to get a task done. If you pay attention to why you’re excited about the project and who will benefit from it, you’ll be naturally pulled into it by intrinsic motivation. Adam Grant.
The second part of the ‘focus equation’ is something to do with the places you tend to get stuff done.
On most Mondays, I meet with my team at a co-working space. I’m not great at being productive on those days, especially penning thoughts like this. There are too many people walking around, conversations going on and interruptions taking place. I’ve learnt to roll with that flow and use the day to collaborate, have meetings, organise the week and smash emails. Most other days of the week, I’m working from home at my desk with the doors open, natural light and no distractions. But more than that I find my own space more inspiring and creative. It might be the reverse for you, what matters is to find that place that sets the right vibes for doing the deep work.
Dan Pink talks about the importance of finding the right moment;
If you’re a morning person, you should do your analytical work early when you’re at peak alertness; your routine tasks around lunchtime in your trough; and your creative work in the late afternoon or evening when you’re more likely to do nonlinear thinking. If you’re more of a night owl, you might be better off flipping creative projects to your fuzzy mornings and analytical tasks to your clearest-eyed late afternoon and evening moments.
This research-backed recommendation of ‘right reason, right place and right moment’ has been a welcomed shift in the way I do work. Previously, I’ve never consciously thought about attaching meaning or outcome to anything I do, I just do it. But this way helps me see arduous or difficult tasks through to completion, especially when I can picture a person that could benefit from it. And when joined with doing the work from an inspiring place and at the right time of the day, you can unleash the productive beast within yourself free.
So that got me thinking. What else can we do to improve focus?
Well, quite a bit actually. There are a lot of ideas, theories and practical advice on how to improve focus and therefore the quality of the work you are producing. I put most of my research efforts towards what the latest science (and some rediscovered neuroscience) tells us about how to up our game on attention and keep a lid on distractions.
I found 7 actionable ideas that you can put in place right now to help you get better at focus and slay at work (and in life);
1. Put your work buddies on mute
For those who find themselves easily distracted by the chatter of their work buddies, there are several methods to create a more conducive working environment. Noise-cancelling headphones can be paired with background music or white noise to help cancel out other voices and create a sense of peace and quiet. Alternatively, some people turn to “wall of sound” techniques, which involve playing a selection of sounds with different frequencies that overlap to mask sound distractions. By using any one of these approaches, workers can better focus on their tasks without the distraction of other conversations around them.
2. The battle between the task & distractions
For this next one, we’re heading back to 1995 and some research conducted by Nilli Lavie on a concept called ‘Load Theory’. As a neuroscientist, she developed a theory on the limits of how much your mind can handle and more specifically, the battle between the task you are working on and distractions in the background. It gets a little nerdy how they tested for this but the outcome is pretty simple: Turn off those pesky notifications, turn away from the news and make a conscious effort to reduce and control the number of distractions if you want to get into the deep work zone.
3.Distractions can often come from within
We naively blame interruptions from others as the root cause of lost productivity but we’re also really good at interrupting ourselves (hello, news, twitter, insta, facebook check). That’s a you thing (and me too) and we gotta take it on the chin. The good news is you don’t need to go all detox, just be thoughtful on the timing of these interruptions (save it for lunch or end of day wind down)
4.Multi-tasking is bad for you but dual tasking is do-able
Some folks wear the multi-tasking badge proudly and often think they have a high level of cognitive ability to do two things at once. But it’s entirely possible they are really bad at telling they are actually distracted. But there’s also another school of thought from some recent work done by neuroscientists Etienne Koechlin and Sylvain Charron which suggests we are actually capable of dual tasking but absolutely suck when a third task is thrown into the mix.
According to recent research, two juggling acts is the upper limit for the brain – anything more and it starts to struggle with effectiveness. To tackle two things at once, the brain divides its limited resources, dedicating one-half of its grey matter to each task. So for example, cooking breakfast and answering a call, or thinking and typing on a keyboard concurrently. Add that third task in at your own risk!
5.Thinking about the future is distracting
Free your brain and maximize productivity with cognitive offloading!
With this simple trick, recommended by cognitive psychologist Stefan Van der Stigchel of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, you can free up your mind to focus fully on the tasks at hand. All it takes is writing down all your worries or future tasks that may be disrupting your concentration—and presto! You've freed up your brain to get on with the job. Start each day by making a schedule and allocating clear parts of the day to focus on tasks—then offload any distractions and get to work!
6.Add collaboration in between deep work
If you want the best of both worlds – creativity and collaboration – aim for intermittent collaboration!
Harvard's Ethan Bernstein's research shows that individuals working independently are less likely to succumb to groupthink, so they're more likely to come up with great ideas. But groups can come up with even better concepts, thanks to "the wisdom of crowds" – and by weeding out the bad ones. Striking a balance between working alone and together is key to getting the best of both worlds! So schedule some time for collaboration, but make sure to mix it in with solo working sessions.
7.Step away from your work to improve your focus
Time to put your work aside and get a hobby. Exploring a passion outside of work can give you an extra spring in your step, rather than depleting away your energy. That's according to Adam Grant, who says that hobbies can actually have a positive effect on your job performance. However, if the idea of taking up a new hobby feels like just another to-do list item, don't force it. But if you've got the time, why not give it a go?
The thing to keep in mind about being productive is that you can't always be 'in the zone' but there are ways that we can either trick our brain or train ourselves to get the most important things done in a day. Remember, achieving one big thing that makes an ongoing ripple is better than ticking 15 things off your task list today, so don't feel bad about the small insignificant jobs that didn't get done today.