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It’s difficult to be productive when our attention is divided. Presently, I have a number of new initiatives I’ve started with existing clients and I’m talking to a potential client with huge global possibilities. I’m also preparing a 3-hour seminar that I plan to deliver to a group of business owners in July.
Beyond that, I just found out that the house I am renting has been sold and I need to find a new place to live in the next month. I’m having a hard time focusing on what’s in front of me. We all think that multi-tasking is the way to stay on top of things and get ahead, but actually it’s just the opposite.
It’s hard to accomplish something when our attention is divided. Last week’s post on Pruning Your Business for Growth, emphasized the need to prune in order to bring simplicity and growth.
There is research to indicate that the brain can only focus on one thing at a time. In his book, Boundaries for Leaders, Henry Cloud states that great leaders lead people in ways that people’s brains can actually follow them. It’s about creating focused attention so that people’s brains can work, which leads to the type of activities that generate results.
So, how do you lead to create focused attention? Cloud talks about three essential processes:
1. Attention
Attention is the ability to focus on what is relevant and to keep it current. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, they had 30 versions of the Macintosh. He drew two columns labeled Desktop and Portable. He then drew two rows labeled Consumer and Professional. The product team moved from 30 versions of the Macintosh to four versions. He had them attend to what was relevant, which led to greater focus, better prioritization and achievement of the goals.
2. Inhibition
Inhibition is the ability to say no to certain things that could be distracting or irrelevant. There are so many good things you could do to improve or grow the business. The question becomes, “Will these good things keep you from doing the best things that will improve or grow the business?” What do you need to take off the list, or delay?
3. Working Memory
Working memory is “the ability to retain and access relevant information for reasoning and decision making.” It’s hard to do this if there are too many moving parts, too many priorities or too many things changing or conflicting. When you have relevant information, you begin a building process so you can build upon your existing information in a way that’s manageable.
Share Your Thoughts: What do you tend to do when you are distracted? What new steps can you try to be more focused?
