Focusing on one task at a time is difficult. In family life, community life, work, or in your personal life focusing on one area is difficult. I'm a husband and father, participate in some community projects, and work as a program manager in a non-profit. In these positions, it is difficult to set time aside and think without distractions. To be able to focus on a task without your brain thinking of something more exciting to do.
There are so many distractions in this world, things that just jump out and grab our attention. Things that are important and worthy of our attention. Some things waste our time and while they could be fun, they can be destructive to what we are working towards.
As a husband, my wife needs my help with managing the household, doing the chores to keep the house functioning, and to care for the kids. We need time together and time with friends and extended family. This alone could be a full-time job, but more areas of life need us.
As a father, my kids need my attention. They are forever saying "Dad look at this," "Dad look at me!" They have school projects, stories to tell me, questions about words and phrases, and things they see on the way to the store. They need help with everything and fathers need to think about the routine and teaching their kids.
As a community member, I have responsibilities. I'm on a board and have meetings and decisions to be made. People to think about.
As a program manager, I have a crazy amount of responsibilities. I have meetings to attend, people to manage, the overall program to manage, budgets to meet, clients to care for, and supervisors to answer to and do things for.
These areas make it hard to focus on one task at a time. Here are 5 strategies you can do to help make time in your busy life to learn to take time to focus, and time to do deep work.
1. Prioritize deep work tasks and objectives: Identify the most important tasks that require deep focus and prioritize them over less critical activities. To do this make a list of these areas and label them high, medium, and low. Some tasks you think are high, you may realize are not that important. Choose the top 25% of things on this list to focus on. Create another list of the next 50% of things and then the last 25% of things. This will assist you in understanding the most important tasks in your life and what you should take time to do some deep work on.
2. Establish a conducive environment: Choose a distraction-free location or use noise-canceling headphones to create a space that promotes focus and minimizes interruptions. Distraction-free can mean different things to different people. Noise-canceling headphones with music playing that you are familiar with is good. It is music that you don't have to think about, it's just in the background of your thoughts. Having a location that you feel comfortable in. This may be a spot in your home where you can be alone, maybe you close the door of your office or my favorite is to sit in a coffee shop where no one knows me. With headphones on I can really focus on tasks.
3. Schedule deep work consistently: Set aside specific times during the day when you feel most energized to engage in deep work sessions regularly. Again this is different for everyone. I find that in the morning I am most focused. I think it is before the craziness of the day catches up to me. There are fewer demands on me and my mind is not cluttered with my to-do list. Emails and messages haven't overwhelmed me yet. I also like the end of the workday, about 3pm-5pm. Most people are winding down from their day and wrapping up their tasks. This time is when I get my focus back.
4. Minimize distractions: Turn off notifications, set clear rules for your deep work session (e.g., no internet browsing), and structure your environment to support your focus. Email, messages, staff stopping into the office to chat about their weekend, or personal things are examples of distractions that we need to be free of to create an environment to allows for focused or deep work. Sometimes this means just getting away from the office and working offsite in a park or sometimes in your car just to free yourself from distractions that suck our time.
5. Reflect and adjust: Keep track of your deep work hours, review your progress regularly, and make necessary adjustments to improve your deep work routine over time. Keep a log of what you have been able to be productive on during the deep work hours. I bet you will be impressed with what you have accomplished.
Focusing on one task at a time is difficult, but not impossible. Using the above ideas to create the atmosphere and time to allow for focused or deep work will greatly improve your productivity. I will also help you maintain positive mental health by showing you that even though life and work are super busy, you can still accomplish tasks.
Focusing on one task at a time is difficult, but not impossible. Using the above ideas to create the atmosphere and time to allow for focused or deep work will greatly improve your productivity. I will also help you maintain positive mental health by showing you that even though life and work are super busy, you can still accomplish tasks.
No comments:
Post a Comment