Chapter 6. The Hocus Pocus of Focus
Make Time-Wasters Disappear
We’ve been talking about the four skills of activity management, which includes how to arrange the activities in your day. Activity arranging involves deciding what activities to put on your plate and giving those activities value. It is those value-added activities we should focus on to achieve high productivity. The fifth skill of activity management is the ability to focus.
You First
We talked in Chapter 2, “Color Your Choices: The Art of Choosing and Refusing,” about learning to say no, or what we call strengthening our “no muscle.” Interestingly, the first person we need to get good at saying no to is ourself. We are often our own worst enemy. We often break our focus for what are merely time-wasting activities. We identified time-wasters earlier as gray activities.
Developing the ability to say no to unnecessary interruptions and distraction activities is critical to being productive. Notice we said unnecessary. The last thing you would ever want to do is get rid of all of your interrupting activities. Some interruptions are essential, job-related, and necessary. We need to eliminate the ones that aren’t necessary—the ones that are the true time-wasters.
The inability to say no to interruptions and distractions breaks our focus. To stay focused, all you need is the skill and will to say no and mean it.
Start learning to focus by taking a personal inventory of the negative activities that cause you to break your focus. Look carefully over the following list of self-imposed, internally motivated focus breakers, and put a check mark by the ones you do that break your ability to stay focused.
Self-Imposed, Internally Motivated Focus Breakers*
_____ Insufficient planning
_____ Socializing
_____ Attempting to do too much
_____ Getting lost in details
_____ Preoccupation
_____ Ineffective delegation
_____ Unwillingness to say no
_____ Arguing
_____ Lack of self-discipline
_____ Procrastination
_____ Failure to prioritize
_____ Your own errors
_____ Failure to listen carefully
_____ Your need to over-control
_____ Unrealistic time estimates
_____ Poorly defined goals
_____ Misplacing or losing items
_____ Failure to anticipate events or changes
_____ Responding to counterfeit urgency
*Source: Charles R. Hobbs, Time Power, Harper and Row.
Now that you’ve taken the survey, how did you do? Did you check a lot of focus breaker activities? If so, we have good news for you! All focus breaker activities that are self-imposed are 100 percent controllable. Be like a magician. Use some hocus pocus, and make them all disappear. The first step is using your “no muscle” on yourself.
Here’s how you do that. Pick one focus breaker on the list that troubles you the most: for example, attempting too much. Attempting too much breaks our focus because we spread ourselves too thin. In your time management tool, write the positive version of your focus breaker to make it a focus maker. Instead of attempting too much, your goal is to be realistic about how much you attempt, so you could write, “I never attempt too much.” Or, because some people prefer to always state things positively, you could write, “I am realistic about my daily goals.”
Write this statement on your activity list every day. Practice it every day for the next three weeks. Practice it just as you would practice your golf swing, playing the piano, or anything you want to get better at. At the end of three weeks, it will be part of your work style to avoid attempting too much.
Next, pick another focus breaker on the list and control that one. Do this on an ongoing basis, and your ability to focus will get better and better.
Don’t try to control all of your focus breakers at once. Work on one at a time throughout the year. As you do, your “no muscle” will get stronger and stronger. It’s not all that hard, and in the end it is highly rewarding.
Now, what about all the focus breaker activities that are system-imposed or externally motivated? These are the activities we are often sucked into that cause us to break our focus as well as make us feel irritated and frustrated. Can we say no to all of those? Not really, but to many of them we can. First, complete the following assessment. Check the system-imposed, externally motivated focus breakers you encounter most often.
System-Imposed, External Focus Breakers*
_____ Meetings
_____ Delayed work
_____ Delayed decisions
_____ Inappropriate use of email, voicemail, and so on
_____ Computer problems (related to support)
_____ Poor communication
_____ Errors by others
_____ Telephone calls
_____ Frequent visits (drop-ins)
_____ Lengthy visits
_____ Poor definition of tasks or problems
_____ Unclear lines of authority
_____ Understaffing
_____ Lack of feedback
_____ Unclear roles
_____ Ongoing incompetence
_____ Conflicting priorities
_____ Emotional conflicts
_____ Changing instructions, priorities
*Source: Charles R. Hobbs, Time Power, Harper and Row.
What did you learn from that survey? Are you letting a lot of system-imposed challenges destroy your ability to focus? The way you address this type of focus breaker is to pick one interruption, distraction, or irritation that breaks your focus. Then ask yourself, “Is it within my power to do something about this?” If not, change your mindset, adapt, suck it up, and stop worrying about it! If you can do something about it, develop a plan and resolve it. Fix one focus breaker at a time, but work on a series of them throughout the year. That’s the easy and most effective way.
Be Strong
The most common activities that break our focus are interruptions and distractions by others. If we have a wimpy “no muscle,” then we will be dominated by them. Dealing with them is easy. All you really need to know are the four response options and the three focus techniques for saying no.
The four response options to interruptions are easy to use. How do you decide which one to choose? Simply color your choices as we described in the first chapter. The four response options are
1. Respond and do it now when it’s red.
2. Reschedule for a later time when it’s green or yellow and can be postponed.
3. Refer it to someone else if it’s not in your domain.
4. Refuse to do it when it’s gray. This is when you use your “no muscle.”
The four techniques for refusing or saying no are
1. The Immediate Response Method. This is when you refuse a request on the spot, immediately after it is made. There are four elements you can include in your refusal statement to soften the response. The elements express
• A desire to be helpful
• A singular reason you can’t
• An expression of regret
• And a thank you for asking
Here’s an example of the refusal statement using those elements. “I’d love to help but right now I just have too much on my plate. I’m really sorry but thank you for asking.” This is a classy approach most people will feel good about.
Caution: When giving a singular reason for saying no such as your plate is full, don’t give details. The more specific reasons you give, the less persuasive you’ll sound. You are not obligated to give reasons.
2. The Delay Tactic. This is when you are unsure and you want to think through the request. People often say yes when they should say no because they are under the pressure of the moment. For example, use a simple statement such as, “I’d like to but I’m not sure I can. Give me some time to think about it and I’ll get back to you.” If, after thinking about it, you decide you can’t, then use a refusal statement with the elements described previously.
3. The Helping Hand Approach. This technique is driven by a sincere desire to be helpful even though you must say no. For example, recommend to the person somebody else who might assist them, or you could suggest alternative solutions. You might also agree to commit some limited time to it. It’s good time management to always lend a helping hand when we can.
4. Just say NO. This takes courage. But when a person approaches you with “gray matter” just say NO. Remember, gray stands for activities that are a complete waste of time, such as office gossip. In our seminars we go through an exercise where participants stand up and yell in their loudest voice, “NO...NO, NO, NO. What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand! Can’t you see that I am working here!”
Practice these techniques and your “no muscle” will get stronger and stronger.
Improving Your Life Quality
You’ve probably already noticed that the activity management skills we’ve been discussing throughout the book are all designed to do one thing. They are intended to improve your ability to focus upon and execute your most crucial work-life activities.
Activity Choosing involves selecting the most important activities on which you should focus.
Activity Tracking involves the skillful use of time management tools to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
Activity Arranging involves planning how, when, and where, and the order for focusing upon and executing the day’s most vital activities.
Activity Flexicuting involves the skill of shifting your focus throughout the day as priorities change.
Get What You Want
You probably also noticed that the first four skills all support the fifth activity management skill, which is Activity Focusing.
In fact, everything we do in activity management is designed to help us identify, focus upon, and accomplish our most vital work-life activities. Get what you want in life by managing your activities with these five skills. You can do it. It is easier than most people think. You can get better and better at it with daily and weekly practice.