Focus, Concentration, Attention span and Being present

Table of Contents

Focus, attention span and being present
Distractions vs focus
Accomplishing things
Book recommendations
Productivity and Time management
Productivity
Time management
Tags

“Anything is possible when you have a path, a plan and a desire to take action.” Dean Graziosi

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” ― Bill Gates

Solitude is the one place where you can truly experience flow in your work. Seek solitude.

“Success is built sequentially. It’s one thing at a time,” the management experts Gary Keller and Jay Papasan point out in their book The One Thing.

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” ― Bill Gates

Beware of the efficiency delusion and productivity porn.

Efficiency and effectiveness are not the same thing.

You’re efficient when you do something with minimum waste. And you’re effective when you’re doing the right something.

The irony is that we achieve far more in the long run when we have slack. We are more productive when we don’t try to be productive all the time.

Trying to eliminate slack causes work to expand. There’s never any free time because we always fill it.

It’s like a finger pointing at the moon. Do not concentrate on the finger or you will miss all of the heavenly glory!– Bruce Lee.

The secret to doing good research is to always be a little underemployed; you waste years by not being able to waste hours. Those wasted hours are necessary to figure out if you’re headed in the right direction. - Amos Tversky

Beware the barrenness of a busy life - Socrates

Modern society is suffering from “temporal exhaustion”. If one is mentally out of breath all the time from dealing with the present, there is no energy left for imagining the future. - Elise Boulding, sociologist

Do not confuse activity for progress.

Focus, attention span and being present

Many successful people say that the ability to focus is the number one reason they’ve made it big. It’s no surprise. The people who are all over the place, the people who lack focus never seem to get anywhere.

Here is a great article that talks about focus, attention span and being present: https://protesilaos.com/books/2022-06-25-knowledge-presence/

Here is it’s table of contents.

Distractions vs focus

Distraction leaves us feeling exhausted and like we aren’t accomplishing anything despite the fact that we’re always busy. And because it becomes a habit, when we’re not being distracted by someone else, we often distract ourselves. To avoid burnout, we need to recognize and devise a plan to combat the problem so we can get our most thoughtful, important work done and unleash our genius on the world.

Distraction leaves us feeling exhausted and like we aren’t accomplishing anything despite the fact that we’re always busy.

In most professional jobs today, multitasking has become a coping strategy. We are constantly shifting our attention from trying to complete assignments and projects, tracking and responding to endless communications, and managing interruptions from colleagues and the office bustle.

Constant distraction leaves a trail of scattered thoughts and partly done tasks in its wake. It leaves us feeling overwhelmed and tired. And when our busy, exhausting days don’t come with a sense of accomplishment, our work feels unsatisfying at best — and demotivating at worst. This is a recipe for burnout because progress is what drives us.

Distraction is the single biggest barrier to meaningful, satisfying work.

See Switch-cost effect and Attention Residue

Our distractions aren’t nearly as paralyzing as our lack of decision-making skills.

Learn to concentrate on the task at hand, learn to make decisions, and most important of all, learn to prioritize. That thing you’ve been putting off? Do it first, then the rest won’t seem like such a slog. Because while longer work hours may create the illusion that you’re a devout cool guy of the “rise and grind” culture, in reality, all you’re doing is ushering yourself along toward an early death, seated at a laminate-wood desk.

The path to improved productivity lies not in “time management,” but in attention management and kicking the distraction habit.

Three easy things anyone can do to begin this process are to

become aware of it,
devise plans to overcome it, and
take advantage of the principle of activation energy.

The first step is awareness because it’s hard to change a habit you don’t realize you have. Habits are triggered by cues, so try to notice how often and why you are allowing your attention to be stolen. Every time you find yourself switching away from a task without an intentional stopping point, note it on a piece of paper. Then think about what caused you to be distracted and jot that down, too.

Once you become aware of the cues, you can find ways to overcome them. For example, ask yourself and others what exactly you might do to keep people from interrupting you when you’re trying to focus or what exactly you might say if they interrupt you anyway. Or ask what you might to do prevent yourself from reaching for your phone. Record these ideas and identify opportunities to try them out, then note whether or not they were successful. Over time, you will begin to understand what works and what does not in your unique situation.

A third way to kick the habit of distraction is the principle of activation energy. Make it easier to engage in more productive attention-management habits. For example, to get started on those thoughtful, important tasks that might otherwise seem difficult, break them down and get specific. Instead of putting “write article” on your to-do list, put “list four bullet points for article.” Instead of “analyze report,” write, “identify the main idea in the first section of the report.” If it sounds fast and easy, you are more likely to do it. So make everything sound fast and easy. The hardest part is getting started.

The corollary of activation energy is friction. (Happiness researcher Shawn Achor refers to this pair of principles as the 20-second rule.) This is a tool you can also employ. For example, if you find yourself in the habit of continually checking your email on your smartphone at home at night, it might not be because you really want to read email. It might instead be because you are simply “used to” checking your email at the office all day long - it’s a habit. So when you leave work, set an intention to leave it behind, and create some friction to back you up. Access your account settings on your device, and turn the mail account from “on” to “off.” Then even if you find yourself compulsively tapping your email app, you’ll be faced with a blank screen. It will take you a few additional seconds to go back into your settings and turn the email back on, which might be enough to remind you of your plan and dissuade you from the impulse.

Accomplishing things

Book recommendations

Counterproductive - Melissa Gregg
No Cure For Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) - Kate Bowler

Productivity and Time management

How is focus related to Productivity and Time Management?

Productivity is all about being able to shift focus to the things that you want to get done and blocking out distractions. Productive people get more done in the day because they are able to focus on something, get it done, and then shift their focus to the next thing on their list and apply intense focus on that as well.

Focus, attention span and being present

Distractions vs focus

Accomplishing things

Book recommendations

Productivity and Time management

Productivity

Time management

Tags

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