Focus

Anything truly remarkable that has happened in humanity is due to focus. Whether it be groups of people, teams or individuals – they were able to focus for hours, days, months or larger significant periods of time to bring their vision to life, achieve goals or produce products and services that are helping humanity.

According to research, most humans have a limited attention span of about 8 seconds at a stretch these days (vs. 12 seconds in 2000 conducted by Microsoft). I am not one to argue on the validity of these numbers or suggest that our attention spans are less than that of a goldfish, but I can agree that due to the age of digital dementia, information overload and social media, it’s no surprise that our ability to focus is under serious threat and in some cases being diminished severely.

Most humans can only focus for short periods of time. Or if they are able to focus, tend to take a multi-tasking approach (aka “the scatter brain approach”). Caveat: If your one of those people who can focus on tasks for extended periods of time, shoot me an email with some of your pro-tips as I’m always looking to learn from others.

Now, there is nothing wrong with taking up multiple tasks – its just that you should ideally be focused on one thing/task at a time for as long as you can. Think of it like going to the gym. Yes you might want to run on the treadmill at the end of your session of doing weights. However, are you going to hop on the treadmill with your weights? Probably not. Your most likely going to have an idea of which exercises your are going to pursue first, then at the end of all the series of weight exercises, you’d hop onto the treadmill. Or if your like me, you may have a plan or a schedule of what exercises you do on certain days or have some form of routine. The same analogy can be applied to multi-tasking (ideally, just don’t do it) and focus on one thing at a time.

Unfortunately, there are situations where multi-tasking is unavoidable and yes I have been in these positions before where due to the nature of the job, it was required but these are quite rare. Where you can, do your best – plan out our tasks, seek help from others in your team or leverage (article for another time). If you do a quick google search, only about 2% of the world’s population can truly multi-task and still focus. A lot of people think they can multi-task, yet they are just lowering their productivity.

Given today’s technological distractions, it surprises me how many people are unaware how many distractions they encounter on daily basis unconsciously. They are simply not practicing focus. It’s a skill like any other and gets stronger the more you practice. Just like lifting weights, running or reading.

Prolonged focus can lead to states of ‘Flow’ (another article for another time). Try this – next time your out having lunch with your friends, having dinner with your partner or family, just put your phone on silent and be fully present for those 20-30mins. You can thank me later.