Five Ways to Find Your Focus
Starve Your Distractions, Feed Your Focus
If you want to be an exceptional leader, you’ll have to come to grips with an indisputable reality.
Your energy flows where your attention goes.
Said differently, whatever you choose to focus on is where your precious energy will be spent.
And this, indeed, is a big deal.
Why?
Because the energy you bring to the table (as a Leader of LIGHT!) is what determines not only your success or failure—but everyone else’s as well.
Here’s the deal.
If you (as a Leader of LIGHT!) can focus on the things that matter most (e.g. dreaming big dreams, identifying the most important priorities, executing flawlessly, and bringing out the best in others!), GREAT things will happen.
However, if you’re one of the legions of leaders who get distracted by all the daily dings, rings, and pings, then it should come as no surprise that your impact is going to be severely compromised.
And while staying focused on the essential tasks at hand sounds so simple when you are reading about it in an e-newsletter, the reality is that finding (and maintaining!) your focus may be the hardest thing you will ever have to do as a leader.
The Battle for Your Attention
As a Leader of LIGHT, it’s essential that you understand that there is a war going on and the battle is for your attention.
In fact, Chris Hayes (in his brilliant book The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource) says this:
“Every aspect of human life across the broadest categories of human organization is being reoriented around the pursuit of attention…Those who successfully extract it capture interest, create followers, sell products, command fortunes, and control lives…Attention is now the defining resource of our age.”
Let me translate this for you.
What Chris Hayes is saying is this: Your attention is the most important resource that you have.
Unfortunately, right now, everyone wants a piece of it. And the fastest way to obtain it is through the use of your digital devices.
Not convinced?
Consider the following:
- On average, leaders check their digital devices 144 times a day.
- This translates into tapping, swiping, and clicking a whopping 2,617 times each day, on average.
- For the heaviest users, taps, swipes, and clicks double to 5,427 touches a day.
- The typical leader now “swipes” or “scrolls” more than a mile each day.
But there’s more:
- The typical leader receives about 121 emails per day and, on average, every email is reviewed within 6 seconds after it hits the inbox.
- The typical leader also receives, on average, 46 texts per day and 95% of these texts will be read within 3 minutes of being sent (with the average response time for a text being a mere 90 seconds).
And now for the big finish:
- Recent studies show leaders can work in front of a digital device for an average of just 40 seconds before they are either distracted or interrupted.
Needless to say, maintaining your focus in the digital age is (and will continue to be) a serious uphill climb.
Five Ways to Get and Stay Focused
Focus Finder #1: Silence All Dings, Rings, and Pings
If your goal is to find your focus and to get into the zone, you need to eliminate every obvious distraction. And this begins by silencing all the alarms and notifications on every single one of your digital devices. Remember: Every time an alarm or notification appears, it’s just one more distraction that will take you further away from your desired destination. Said differently, if you want to focus, you have to keep the main thing the main thing. Everything else has to wait.
Focus Finder #2: Out of Sight is Out of Mind
If you just can’t bring yourself to silence your alarms and notifications (I told you those engineers, product-designers and Silicon Valley wizards are insanely powerful), you’ll need to take more drastic measures.
Here’s your mission.
Take your phone and put it in another room.
If this is not an option, leave it in your car. Hide it in a desk drawer. Give it to a friend. Do whatever is necessary to get it out of your immediate sphere of attention.
But here’s the thing.
If you need to take this kind of drastic measures, it’s a pretty good indication that your focus is seriously faltering. The good news is, if you take this advice to heart, you’re about to get better fast.
Focus Finder #3: Work in Full Screen Mode
Like the game show “Let’s Make A Deal,” our brains are always interested in seeing what’s behind Door Number Two. And just like the actual game show—it’s hard not to just “sneak a quick peek” at the juicy little morsels that magically appear on your screen.
The good news is you can eliminate this temptation by working in full screen mode. By way of explanation, full screen mode is where the application you are working on is shown in its entirety, without any borders, toolbars, or other user interface elements—thus taking up the entire screen of the device.
When working in full screen mode, the only thing you can see is the task that you are working on.
In this case, out of sight is indeed out of mind.
Focus Finder #4: Do Only One Thing at a Time
Newsflash: There’s no such thing as multi-tasking—it’s one of the biggest misnomers on the planet.
Time and again, researchers have demonstrated that our brains can only focus on ONE thing at a time. Trying to do otherwise depletes our energy, increases our frustration and robs us of the joy of getting in the zone.
Repeat after me: one thing at a time.
Focus Finder #5: Get Your Daily Dose
Another terrific way to boost your focus is to infuse some caffeine into your system.
Make no mistake: small amounts of caffeine can have a profound effect on not only getting you zeroed in, but on your overall productivity as well.
Ideally, you’ll need anywhere from 70mg-180mg to get the job done. This is roughly the amount you’ll get in a standard cup of tea or coffee.
But, because of the sugars and added chemicals in other types of caffeinated beverages, we recommend you steer clear of sodas and energy drinks—the short and long-term drawbacks are just to0 counterproductive.
BONUS Focus Finder: Make Your Bed.
I know this sounds like such a simple thing—and maybe even a little ridiculous.
But here’s the deal.
By making your bed each morning, you are taking control of the minutia in your life.
And by taking control over the little things, you not only gain closure (because you are actually seeing something through to completion) but you also improve your confidence that you can actually get things done in other areas!
And it’s this increase in confidence that helps you to take on the bigger things!
Leading with LIGHT
Remember, the new currency of the digital age is attention—and the battle is on for yours.
What’s more, if you want to stay focused, the most important thing you can do is to realize that it’s your digital devices that will sell you out every time.
To neutralize them, we encourage you to employ the five key strategies listed above.
If you do these things, not only will you get more done, but you will be less stressed and you’ll make (and keep!) more friends than ever before.
And that’s a big part of what being a Leader of LIGHT is all about.
Until next time: See LIGHT, Be LIGHT, and Spread LIGHT.
Until Next Time...
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About Lead with Light
Lead with Light is an initiative that aims to equip current and emerging leaders with a reimagined approach to servant leadership.
Our ultimate vision is to grow and develop thousands of Leaders of Light to ignite a movement to see light, be light, and spread light in ways only each can.