Focus

2 Feb 2012

Focus

In a world full of distraction, focus becomes an almost invaluable commodity. So how do we drown out the almost ever present noise of our 'always connected' world and focus on taking action on those things that are important?

That question has been the driving force of a few little experiments of late. Let me share some of them with you.

Cutting back the noise:

Restrict Facebook friends & Twitter friends to a maximum of 150 people each - See Dunbar's number
Cut down the number of blogs in my RSS reader from over 30 to eight.
Renewed focus on my 'mindfulness' practice
Shift all blogging activities to this site
Move back to one twitter account, rather than three seperate accounts

Working smarter:

Check email only twice a day - I'm better at this on my work account than gmail!
Utilise the Pomodoro techinque when working on a project
Use a customised version of GTD to organise my tasks
Deliver three key things each day - Should be things which progress important projects

Running on the right fuel:

Eat Breakfast every day
Make smarter choices regarding what I eat and when I eat it
Exercise on a regular basis

I've had varying degress of success with those initiatives. I definitely feel "cutting back the noise" has been a valuable exercise. I feel with social media, you can get caught up in what I call a "that's great" loop. That is bouncing from one cool idea to a next, but never actually taking action on anything. I've certainly been guilty of that in the past! Cutting back, is helping me focus on action.

The "working smarter" and "running on the right fuel" intiatives are still a work in progress. Slowly but surely though I'm building new positive habits and it's all in the name of focus!

What do you do to maintain focus in this digital, 'always connected' world? I'm keen to hear any great tips you may have, so please share :-)

4 months ago Chris Ferdinandi responded:

Hi Adam!

Nice tips. I've done a few of those myself. Here's my current strategy (using your categories):

CUTTING THE NOISE

1. I only follow about 50 people on Twitter. I actually tend to unfollow more people than I add in any given month, so that number has slowly been going down. On Facebook the number is higher, because it's real life friends who generally don't make a lot of noise (unless you consider LOL cats noise).

2. One blog. One Twitter account. Blogs are my achilles heal. When I have books to read (typically fiction) the number is lower, but I'm between novels right now, so I'm reading blogs like mad to fill the void.

3. I tend to not watch a lot of TV, so yay there!

WORKING SMARTER

1. I admit, I'm easily distracted. Worst thing about working at a computer is that there's ALWAYS something to distract you. I've started doing more of my work "analog" in a Muji notebook when I can.

2. I check email every half-hour. It's almost never anything useful. That said, on days where I'm in the zone, I'll check it twice - once at the beginning of the day, and once at the end of the day.

3. I can't always do this, but when I can, I like to pick one project and work on nothing but that all day. I get WAY more done this way.

4. I found GTD far too complex. I now use a simple system:
- My calendar tells me when I have meetings.
- I keep one big to-do list... project headings, with sub-items for all the action steps beneath them.
- On most days I use a Fieldnotes notebook for a daily to-do list of 3 - 5 things that need to happen that day.

5. I also generally ignore my desk phone in the same way I ignore my email. I'll check voicemails periodically, and pick up my cell phone right away.

THE RIGHT FUEL

1. As you know, I've started exercising again. It's made a big difference.

2. I have an egg-and-cheese sandwich almost every day. As a guilty pleasure, I usually have sausage on it too. Trying to cut that out and replace it with fruit.

3. I don't drink much coffee, that I do require a daily cup in the morning. I wish I didn't need it.

Cheers Adam!

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