How Distraction-Addicts Find Focus
If I’m not distracted, I’m looking for the next distraction. I’m addicted to distraction. It makes me feel important.
Distraction doesn’t make you important it makes you shallow.
Meaningful leadership means letting go of meaningless activities.
10 Ways to Find Focus:
- Set the tone of your day when you wake up.
- Wake up early to begin slowly. Waking up early is really about going to bed.
- Reconnect with things that matter most. Every morning I pause, look at my wife, and touch her.
- Read, pray, write, and/or set priorities.
- Monitor and manage your self-talk.
- Set alarms on your cellphone so you can ignore your calendar.
- Keep one or two browser tabs open. In the past, I kept at least 10 browser tabs open, including email, calendar, my blog, and Tweetdeck just for starters.
- Disconnect for two or three minutes several times a day. The ability to disconnect is essential to being present.
- Schedule and protect whitespace.
- Prepare for your next appointment by disconnecting from the last. A three minute buffer between meetings should be sufficient. The next person on your schedule deserves your full attention, if they don’t, cancel the appointment.
- Practice gratitude. Ugliness distracts from beauty.
- Determine if you work best alone or with others.
- Turn off dings and other repetitive notifications. If you need to check email every ten minutes, do it, but don’t allow dings in your office.
- Delegate authority to people you trust. You’re working too hard, if you’re surrounded by competent people.
Bonus: Capitalize on personal rhythms. Are you a morning person? Do what matters most in the morning. I spend two hours a day in focused work every morning.
Don’t waste your life doing ankle-deep work.
How might leaders defeat distraction and find focus?
Good morning….always enjoy reading your posts.
Could you clarify point 10 from today’s note?
Delegate authority to people you trust. You’re working too hard, if you’re surrounded by competent people.
Would you not be working too hard if you were surrounded by IN-competent people?
Because, the leader can train competent people to share some of the load, so a leader can focus on the Most important things that only the leader can do.
Thanks Greg. I see that you aren’t the only one interested in clarification on #10.
The idea is to surround yourself with talented people who can do some of the things that are distracting you. If you’re surrounded by competent people — and you’re still distracted — you’re working too hard.
Perhaps another way to say this is. You should be distracted if you are surrounded by competent people.
Trust your team and become less distracted.
Thanks for asking for clarification. I can see where #10 is confusing.
I’m not sure what you meant to say in 10 by, You’re working too hard, if you’re surrounded by competent people. Can you expand a little on that. I do better by lifting my people to be competent in their areas and it frees me to go on to explore and develop the next step forward as a leader. What did I miss in what you wanted to say?
Great post, Dan. I also struggled with #10. Would it not be if you are surrounded by incompetent people?
Thanks Donna. I see what you are getting at. Is this better? You shouldn’t be distracted if you can trust the talented people around you. Don’t work to the point of distraction. Trust your team.
Hope that helps.
Great post. I am definitely a distraction addict myself (this post is one of my distractions).
Question. How do you deal with distraction(s) presented by those around you – at the office, home, etc? Also, if I determine that I work better alone (which I do) than what are some practical tips for doing that without offending those who work best with others?
Thanks Dan!
Derek
me too
Thanks Derek. Others often are sources of distraction. They may feel that their issue is a crisis. I found that putting them off for an couple hours may help. “Could we deal with this issue this afternoon? I’m right in the middle of ….”
Live by your calendar. When someone distracts you, look at your calendar and ask when could we meet to deal with this?
Regarding the issue of being more productive working alone. Some of this depends on the culture and your job responsibilities. I wonder if some conversations on the team about strengths and productivity would be useful? In any case, I wouldn’t make major changes that impact others without discussing it with them.
You might try creating a code…if my door is closed, please respect the fact that I’m concentrating on something I prefer not to be disturbed unless the building is on fire.
Just some thoughts
I agree wholeheartedly with these suggestions. Unfortunately, “open door” policy is taken a little too literally in my organization. So while these strategies would actually allow me to be more present for my staff in a meaningful way, I am often faced with criticism when I attempt to implement them.
I don’t think he finished his thought: ” You’re working too hard, if you’re surrounded by competent people and don’t utilize their talents and skills!” That’s how I perceived it…
That’s how I read it as well. In other words, if you’ve got competent (and trusted) people around you, you should be able to delegate to them.
Thanks Tom. YOu nailed, even though it was a confusing sentence.
A powerfully good reminder today Dan! Fondling distraction can be a sort of ‘self defense’ mechanism that is very unhealthy and unproductive. One of my personal goals is to remember to ‘wherever I am – be there’ and it takes constant work for me to make that happen. For those that want to think on the spiritual plane regarding this topic (of “don’t waste your life”), this is a common theme of John Piper’s that I’d highly recommend if you’re interested. Here’s the link:
http://www.desiringgod.org/messages/dont-waste-your-life–2
also: http://www.desiringgod.org/books/dont-waste-your-life
Thank you for this great reminder today – I DON’T want to live an “ankle deep” life and I’m guessing your readership will agree!
Amen Jeff. Second your John Piper recommendation!
Delegation could easily be a post into it’s own, but it is critically important. I’ve had a delegation training in which the tasks were delegated at different levels based on the persons technical ability and creative energy, meaning their willingness to do a good job on the particular task. A leaders time is more effectively used raising those technical and creative energies than just doing the tasks ourselves.
One point I’m not sure about is the concept of “whitespace.” I infer that it means a block of time scheduled to reflect and refocus? Am I on the right track?
Thanks,
Chris
As always…great actionable leadership content, and please clarify #10 as others commented above
Great post as usual! A few thoughts:
You suggest we need to set priorities. The late Stephen Covey wrote about the ‘big rocks’ – must be put into the schedule first. He did a demo putting collections of sand, pebbles, …, small rocks into a glass jar. Starting with the sand, there was not enough room for the small rocks; starting with the small rocks, all fit in – with room even for water!!! Start with high priorities!!! [Aside: I suggested to students to use some (not all – need to just socialize or ‘zone out’ too) of those short “usually wasted” times to start a priority item. At the least, it might identify a need for help and give you a better idea of the total time required!]
Your #8: “Determine if you work best alone or with others.” BUT keep in mind that you will be doing both. Really, to me, this means finding out if one works best on one-person or multi-person facets of team projects. Diverse teams will develop a more creative and useful response! But team projects should never mean the whole team works on every facet!!!
Reading The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero and he speaks of the need to observe ‘Sabbath Delight’… certainly resonates with this piece of advice you offer as well. Love your insights, great start to each day.
Good post Dan. I find that I can work very hard but very effectively ONLY because I’m surrounded by competent people. In my team we are all competent experts, but in slightly different niches/specialisms that nearly, but don’t quite, overlap. We can all busk what the others do, but we all need each others’ competence to really fly
Please help me to better understand your whitespace recommendation. Thanks!
I don’t know for sure how Dan means ‘whitespace’ but, for me, it’s the joyful absence of urgent demands. Yes, white is the uniform mixture of all colors but for me whitespace is more like black – the absence of all…
Many days I feel like I am ankle deep in muck and days like today I feel like I am ankle deep and I am standing on my head. I like the points you made and I see how distraction rob me of energy and time. I think many of them I do have control over especially the ones I create. Thank you sir.
Excellent advice. There are a few genuine, compassionate and wonderful people who are themselves perennially distracted, and who stop by often to ask pertinent questions, but add minutes of idle chatter into the conversation. Sometimes I pick up the phone as though starting to make a call, or even leave my cubicle if they don’t respond to my telling them I’m busy and will talk later. It takes discipline to keep oneself from getting distracted, let alone not getting distracted by others.
Schedule whitespace? I think I know what you are referring to but I have never heard it put this way. Can you provide some more detail for clarification?