Earlier this summer I found myself walking downtown and I was there at around noon so it was very very busy. Many hundreds if not thousands of people out grabbing a bite to eat, going out of their buildings in and out of their offices at this very busy time of day.
As I was making my way from point A to point B on these busy streets I passed by a couple who were speaking to one another. As I walked by all I could hear was the gentleman say yeah I know what you mean I'm just so...
Im just so ADD
Im just so ADD. That phrase I'm just so ADD really stuck with me the rest of that day it's actually stuck with me for a number of weeks since that particular episode.
Now I don't know the context of the conversation that was happening. I didn't stop and try and EES drop any longer all I heard was someone say in a joking manner hey I'm just so ADD.
I think this is stuck with me for a few different reasons. Number one ADD attention deficit disorder is an actual disorder.
Millions of children and adults suffer from attention deficit disorder and it can make it very challenging very difficult for people to acquire new skills and to learn new things. I guess I was a little disappointed and I'm always disappointed when someone is joking about a real disorder which has negative effects on other individuals.
But I think the other reason why this phrase stuck with me is that I have heard it before and I continue to hear it in some shape or format that hey I'm I'm losing my focus or I don't have a lot of attention or I need to get this done right now CU if I don't do it right now I'm never going to remember to do it later. It seems that we have sort of given up on improving our focus and improving our attention span.
We sort of say to ourselves listen we live in an interconnected world my phone is vibrating or beeping at a constant rate what are you going to do. I can't focus on anything for any given time.
Focus is a scarce resource
Well I believe quite strongly that focus is the most scarce resource we have in the world right now. I believe it's more scarce than oil it's more scarce than uh clean air and a clean environment it's more scarce than polite political discourse.
The lack of focus that you and I see on a daytoday basis is a little scary and you might be feeling this yourself a lack of focus a lack of attention either forgetting some simple things or maybe some bigger things or just jumping from one thing to the next. If you have an experienced this yourself you have certainly observed others with their lack of focus or their lack of attention span jumping from one thing to the next glancing down to their foone back up at you trying to conduct a conversation.
Well I hope to share with you a few different ways in how you can improve your focus and get your attention back. Maybe you can share some of these tips some of these techniques with those that you care about or those that you work with as well.
Multitasking
One of the biggest factors that affects our focus is multitasking. Multitasking hurts our productivity in so many different ways.
Number one I hope to convince you to stop actually using the term multitasking because what we're actually doing is switch tasking. You know we never actually multitask we are only going back and forth quite rapidly between our tasks.
That's because as human beings it is impossible for us to focus on two different things at the exact same time. The keyw there is focus.
I'm not talking about patting your head and rubbing your tummy I'm not talking about chewing gum and walking down the street at the same time. I mean focusing on two different tasks at the exact same time.
We can't do it we're going back from our email to the conversation to something else that we're working on we are switching back and forth switch tasking. But as a result all of this switching all of this back and forth wastes an awful lot of our time and effort.
You know going back and forth we we keep asking ourselves you know what was I working on next what was I what was I doing here oh that's right let me let me try and engage in this again before I jump back to some other type of activity. Another thing that wastes a lot of our uh a lot of our time with switch tasking is the time itself.
Study after study will show that you are much more efficient if you complete your tasks try to complete task number one in its entirety before going to task number two. Otherwise you will spend as much as 50% longer completing both of those tasks if you go back and forth.
This also tends to add a lot of stress and a lot of burnout in our work lives as well. As we go back and forth it takes a lot more energy a lot more mental power a lot more mental energy to go back and forth between all of these tasks.
Well there's something else that is really dangerous about switch tasking because as we get used to switching between these microtasks as we continue to do more and more smaller things at a time it gives us a bit of a high. It gives us a shot of that dopamine that that pleasure sensor in our brain.
So we may reply to a short email which really is relatively meaningless it wasn't very important uh could have been done later but we reply to the email and because it's sent off because that's another email that we've sent today it says hey I I've done something I've I've done something good and that gives us a bit of a shot a bit of a high in our day. So we continue to do similar things like that think of your checklist or maybe your to-do list.
Many people get this same type of high or this same type of pleasure by Crossing something off or checking something off of their to-do list even if it is a meaningless task even if it's not very helpful uh to your job to your organization to your family to your personal life just the act of Crossing things off gives us this High. Well here's the thing the more we do this the more we engage with these microtasks these very small tasks our brain starts to become addicted to these microtasks.
If these very small tasks such as replying to a quick email or doing something very very quick very easy off the side of our desk is that gives us this High we start to Crave we start to want to more do to do more of these types of activities. As a result it becomes a lot more difficult for us to engage in the more uh focused the more big project work our our deep work.
How do how do we fully engage with a uh piece of written content or a big project that requires a lot of intense focus a lot of intense concentration. So this is not a theory this is not just my observation.
This is coming from many many scientific studies showing that maybe that individual that I saw on the street earlier this year maybe he was on to something. Maybe more of us are in fact losing our intention span having more difficulty with Focus because we're doing it with ourselves as we go back and forth between these microtasks.
So what is one way that we can uh get our attention back. How can we regain some of that focus and stop being so addicted to multitasking to switch tasking and all of these microtasks that we tend to engage with on a daily basis.
Well I think a big factor is our devices and the notifications that we receive. So I want to share with you three notifications I think you should turn off right now.
Three notifications that I want you to review. I want you to look at how often are they buzzing are they beeping are they attracting you to them when you should really be focused on other work.
Number one turn off your email desktop alerts. Let's start with our computers.
Email Desktop Alerts
What is an email desktop alert. Well it usually looks something like this what you see in the bottom right hand corner.
It gives you the name of the sender it gives you the subject line it gives you usually the first sentence of the email. It is extremely distracting because most email clients such as Outlook like we see here have it turned on by default.
So every single message comes in and says here I am look at this here I am look at this here I'm a piece of spam come check me out. Time and time again we get these notifications whether we want to see them or not and it just distracts you.
Look at this it's in the front of the email that perhaps I was trying to read. I may not even have my email open.
I could be in a separate document I could be somewhere else and I get these annoying notifications. Now some of you may be saying well Scott once in a while those notifications are are helpful.
Well what you may not know is that you can turn off these notifications but then set a rule so that only certain ones come through. So is there a particular sender or maybe a small group of senders that you would like to see their messages.
Maybe it's your boss maybe it's your significant other. You can set up a rule so that only those messages come through.
Is there a keyword that you always want to make sure if it appears in the message or if it appears in the subject you want that to come through. You can set up that rule.
How about if it's a high importance message. They've thrown on that red High exclamation mark.
You can set up a rule for that. So you don't necessarily have to get rid of all of these desktop notifications but you can set it up for only particular ones or particular scenarios.
Otherwise turn the rest of them off. Ignore these types or eliminate these types of distractions from your day.
App Badges
The second one I want you to turn off right now are your app badges. App badges usually are in the form of a circular number on the top rightand corner of your apps on your smartphones or on your iPad or a tablet.
Here is a screenshot from my iPad and you see I've got a couple of badges uh just for demonstration purposes here on my LinkedIn and my Facebook app. These can be extremely annoying because I find more often than not they are only tempting you to open up that app more
often than you actually need to.
Hey you've got a couple of new invites here hey we've done a few new things with the with the app here hey look at how many unread messages you have in your inbox. Who cares.
We receive email all the time we receive email 247. You should expect to have some new email on a regular basis.
Why do you need a number showing you that at all times. So my suggestion go into your settings change your notifications and remove these badge app icons.
Now there may be one or two such as your phone app your text messaging app where that might be helpful right if you have a message or a missed call if you have some unread text messages maybe that will be useful. But by default most of these applications want you to have their notifications turned on.
They want to be screaming at you they want to be saying hey come open me up come inter with me right now. Well you don't need that distraction so go in and turn off all of your little red pimples on the front of your device reduce another form of distraction from your mobile device.
Mobile Alerts
The last one I want to speak on today is about turning off your mobile alerts. Again very much like the badge app icons we get a lot of these.
Here's an example from a iPhone user we've got reminders messages we've even got news updates. Now just like I said about the badge app icons there may be a few such as your phone app such as your messaging app that you may wish to see here.
But if your home screen is full of reminders if it's full of messages from apps that you didn't even remember that you had go in and make the change. Turn them off.
You don't need these many things buzzing at you or vibrating at you or getting in the way from you wanting to access other apps on your device. So stop being interrupted so frequently with too many messages too many unnecessary messages and turn off these notifications.
Summary
So in review three types of notifications that I would strongly encourage you to turn off right now. One your email desktop alerts.
You don't need to see an alarm you don't need to see a signal for every single single email that arrives. Turn off those little red annoying circles those app badges on your smartphone or your iPad or a tablet.
Then carefully review be brutally honest with your mobile notifications. You don't need to be notified about everything that's going on in your phone.
I hope some of these tips some of these pieces of advice will help you regain your focus help you to focus on your most important work. Remember if you would like some more tips some more techniques be sure to subscribe right here to the simpletivity YouTube channel.
Remember being productive does not need to be difficult in fact it's very simple
