5 Ways to Disconnect in a Distracting World
PEOPLELEADERSHIP
It has already been established by famous quotes, accomplished people, inspirational movies, and leadership books that to reach your highest level of achievement you are required to be focused. Not only the type of focus that allows you to accomplish results like everyone else but a level of laser focus that allows you to become a productivity machine or to become the master of certain material. Generally, this laser focusness is a prerequisite for future success in various stages of your education, career, or life.
However, we currently live in a world full of distractions, distractions that come at you from multiple dimensions. We are bombarded with emails, all kinds of technology, social media, hyped news, and an environment that seems to make us feel like everything requires escalated attention. For the most part, our days our highly unproductive or if they are productive we are typically not creating something original and generally fall into an auto-pilot mentality and let our days pass us by as we fall into an abyss of monotony. When we do get a chance to focus, what we end up with are folks who are actually producing things of quality, completing multiple things, or are the go-to experts in something, and then most people will never get to this level.
One key thing though is to not confuse activity or busyness with productivity, remember that performance is measured on results, not effort.
If you are convinced now that being focused is important, the next question to address is how do you do it in a distraction-filled world? I will add, this is not easy to do, and even though I have these steps laid out that, I also fall into the distraction trap occasionally. I am going to share 5 ways that I have used to overcome this simple to understand, yet complex to accomplish task.
Intentionally Disconnecting
Emails, texts, social media, news, and various escalations have found a way to enter into our lives and take over. We all know about it, but few of us choose to do it, because let’s admit it we can't stop, it is addicting. Daily, if you are not prepared and have properly armed your ship, it will be sunk by a barrage of distracting information coming in various forms.
What is imperative is to take back control of your time, and deliberately block out time on your calendar to ‘focus’ on the task before you. This focus time should be deliberate which could be to expand your knowledge on something, think about something, or simply to productively create or complete something. This article goes into the details about our brains, and impacts on us and calls it a digital detox.
In my household, we do not have cable and we watch TV an average of 0 minutes on weekdays, and possibly 2-3 hours throughout the weekend for possibly a movie or a documentary on Netflix. (An obvious benefit is that my children will naturally benefit from and inherit the same technology disconnection tendencies.) I typically try to have my ‘disconnect’ time for 1-2 hours during work hours daily to fully complete work tasks and then I choose to either wake up early or stay up late for another 2-3 hours daily to think, write, read, learn something new or expand my knowledge of something.
Forget About Multitasking
If I were a MythBuster, I would find a way to bust the myth that doing multiple things at the same time is productive. We often put it in our job descriptions or hear it in interviews of candidates, something about the ‘ability to multitask’. There is nothing mathematical about this but if you put 50% of your focus on doing one thing while simultaneously putting 50% focus on another thing, you intuitively generate 50% quality work for 2 things. The 50% quality of these 2 different things, unfortunately, does not equate to 100% total quality. You end up with 2 mediocre things. This article by the American Psychology Association stresses that multitasking takes a toll on productivity.
In addition, I would make the case that you don’t end up saving time either, which is the reason why we try to multitask in the first place. I believe in the business world we do this to our employees regularly in the form of requiring them to manage or work on multiple projects simultaneously. What we end up with is people attending multiple meetings each day and then switching their minds from one project to another and never truly focusing on either. Again, the outcome is lower quality and not really saving any time. At a personal level, think about the mental and even physical exhaustion you go through every single day. You probably end up producing work of lower quality than you know you are capable of and you know it. However, you did what your manager assigned you to do and you made it through the day. Image this at a macro-level, for a business being multiplied by tens to hundreds of employees - your business ends up generating mediocre-quality work by the highly-qualified people you recruited and hired.
This mentality also applies to trying to multitask while in a meeting - you will not focus on what is being said and then the work you are doing will also not get your full focus. You will ruin your chance to have a great personal presence with 100% of your attention, which leads to a meeting taking longer than it should and also missing a great opportunity to give the people speaking the respect they deserve, in which you miss an opportunity to improve or strengthen relationships. In addition, I will take a wild guess but whatever you were working on during this meeting probably isn’t your best quality work either.
Enjoy What You Are Focusing On
Let’s say you actually found time to focus and you are actually focusing on one thing only, that thing you focus on should be something you enjoy. Without that joy or passion to drive you, you will not give it your best shot. This is where your decision-making plays a big part in your personal success. What you choose to do with your time, is your choice. To master material or become the rock star of the business world that you ought to be, you will need to enjoy it.
This ‘enjoying’ can come in many ways, I will cover three (3).
The simple way is studying or learning something that you truly have a passion for. Let’s say you really enjoy the topic of leadership, you highly increase your chances of mastering the material as you will be more willing to invest your scarce time into reading more books on that topic.
The other way is choosing a profession, career, or job that you truly love. If you find yourself hating what you do, no matter how undistracted you are, the output of your focused time may still be high quality but it will likely not be the best quality work you are capable of producing, had it been something you had a passion for.
The last way could be within a job that you don’t necessarily love but you can choose to focus on elements or projects within that job that do excite you. I can make a case that within any job that exists, there is some element of that job that inspires you. For example, had I been in a job as a call center agent, I may not love the job in its entirety but I would somehow fall back on my core interests. I would use what I learned from the daily interactions with customers to manually track data on trends, customer habits, productivity, etc., and using this information I would propose improvements to share with the business leaders or I would use it to improve upon my knowledge or application of statistical or analytical tools. The catch here is to put your spin on whatever it is you are doing to ‘enjoy’ it and ultimately add value to your business or your mastery of some material. If you can't 'trick' yourself into liking something about your job, maybe you need to find a new job.
Learn to Unfocus & Refocus
I am a proponent that our minds are extremely capable and can produce for us as long as we don’t burn them out. What I specifically mean by this, is that you must allow your mind to have ‘switching’ patterns from one material to another. I believe that it is perfectly healthy to study certain material or to do the same thing 4-5 hours daily as long as you allow your mind to focus on something else while switching. This is just as much of a mental discipline as it is a discipline to literally do or focus on something different. What I mean by mental discipline is, as you are doing ‘something else’ do not still be thinking about that thing you were ‘focusing’ on earlier.
My personal belief is that if you do not do this, the next day or the next time you focus, either your mind will not have the ability to focus, you will be mentally exhausted, or the originality/joy of your work will be handicapped.
That balance can come from focusing on new material, spending time with your family, playing a game you enjoy, socializing, or simply anything else. Again, what I mean by finding balance does not mean you cannot literally become a learning or productivity machine 24 hours a day if you choose, but rather while you are switching between things during those 24 hours, try to ‘turn off’ that previous thing you were focusing on. Do not necessarily confuse finding balance as a recipe to focus part of the day and then be lazy the rest, but it can be if you choose it to be. We all have our ways of functioning in our daily cycles, we all have our passions, and we all have our own personal priorities but when you are doing one thing do not be thinking about the other.
This one is easy to state but hard to do. One trick I have learned to do this is to let it go and put trust in your own process that by not thinking about the ‘other thing’ while doing this one thing, it is better for both that ‘other thing’ and this ‘one thing’. (Hopefully didn't confuse you too much with that!)Trust the process.
Physical Well-Being
Personally, I see a major connection between physical well-being/fitness and mental performance. I have personally observed that when I go for long periods (such as 1 week) that I am not physically active I get mentally drained easily, my mental energy level decreases, I think slower, and I tend to get distracted easily. Your body is incredibly capable so don’t be afraid to push it and understand that there is a major connection between your blood flow and internal juices to your mind’s abilities.
When your body is physically capable and well-taken care of, you will think straight and also have an increase in personal confidence which has nothing to do with your looks but rather with the endorphins generated by your body sent to your mind. The physical activity also serves as a mental pressure valve which helps you release that mental stress generated by the intense focus you are doing so that you can get up and refocus again the next day with the same level of intensity. There is a lot of literature out there to support this, however here is a simple version of it.
Closing
Again, it is established that to become that rock star on the team, you need to either be the master of some material and/or be someone who can generate super productivity and super high-quality work. However, to do this you must have the ability to focus and focus intensely. Don’t fall into the trap most people do and let the distractions of the world or your workplace take over your every activity. With these 5 ways outlined here, you can transform yourself into the rock star you are capable of becoming!
What are your thoughts?
