Staying Focussed in a sea of distraction

I’ve been finding it hard to focus lately

I often listen to a podcast called “7 good minutes” which has excerpts of inspiration from some amazing thought leaders in just 7 minutes or less. The other day the host was interviewing Robin Sharma on tips on how to deal with being distracted and stay focussed. This last week has been one of those weeks where my focus was definitely distracted….by news broadcasts on the pandemic, climate change, and Afghanistan; to mention a few. And lots of interruptions to my schedule which meant my diary was often upturned. And on top of all that I was helping my sister home-school, my nephew…you parents out there are doing it so tough!! So it was time to turn my attention to words from one of our great thought leaders in leadership. You might find some gems here too.

Addiction to distraction

An addiction to distraction is the death of creative production. New research suggests that the average person checks their phone 200 to 500 times every single day. In his book, the 5am Club, Robin Sharma reminds me “your phone is costing you your fortune”… I would add “my phone and Netflix…” but yeah I get it.

Robin’s voice is lovely to listen to on the podcast. He says “All great thinkers have one thing in common, they spent long periods of time away from diversions, distractions, trivial interruptions. So you can be like the majority being busy. Or you can be a history maker, and a legendary producer”…I want to be a producer! And yes a legendary one! Tell me more…he has my attention now 🙂

Robin says staying focussed is about building my “tight bubble of total focus”…ok tight and total, got it! What else?

Digital dementia

Robin says I need to avoid “Digital dementia”…yes will do, that sounds bad.

Robin says another term for digital dementia is “attention residue, where you leave a residue of your attention on the screen”. So every time you watch the news on YouTube, check your email, scan Facebook messenger, a little bit of your attention gets left there. And the impact of that is cognitive fatigue where you find yourself feeling depleted, which is not a great place to be if you want to stay focussed and draw on your creativity.

If every single piece of attention that we give to our phones, screens, YouTube, Netflix, etc is stealing our cognitive bandwidth, the trick is to rid yourself of these distractions for a period of time and create a focus bubble.

Creating a focus bubble

I actually do this as a practice. I optimise my diary with colour-coded areas which are my focus times, and I give myself a goal for these times. I usually have 1 or 2 a day, because I know that I will only do 1 or 2 really good pieces of focussed work per day, amidst the emails, administration, follow-ups, and planning that fills up the rest of the time. I also only check emails at certain times per day and turn off notifications on my laptop to ensure that my focussed time is uninterrupted.

According to Robin, “if you get away from distraction, and you simply sit or work on the project that will allow you to change the game in your marketplace, your prefrontal cortex, which is the seed of thinking and criticism and ruminating, actually shuts off for a short period of time”. And then a literal pharmacy of creative chemicals are released; dopamine and serotonin, and brainwaves shift to beta and slow down, allowing for a deeper place of thinking and inspiration.

So yes, that’s the nirvana we want, Leonardo da Vinci style!

I’m happy to share how I optimise my diary to provide my focussed times with you! Sharing it with you helps me keep myself accountable too!