5 Steps to Maximize Your Attention at Work
CAN I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE?!?!
Pardon the interruption and the written equivalent of a bullhorn, but it seemed appropriate here given the last 30 days of Information Overload dissection in mainstream media outlets, on Twitter, in LinkedIn Groups and throughout the blogosphere.
So given my cheap ALL CAPS ploy and the ramped up pursuit of The Daily Me by the likes of LinkedIn, Flipboard, Zite, or other incubating algorithms with pretty faces, I’m hypersensitive at the moment to deliver something that helps rather than perpetuates the problem. With that in mind here are 5 things that are helping me manage my time better, gain efficiency in the workplace and keep me focused.
5 Steps to Maximize Your Attention
- Tune In with filters. Tune Out with delete and ignore — Outlook and Web-based e-mail services are much more powerful than Compose and Send. Take 10 minutes to learn how you can channel your incoming information into key topics, work disciplines and levels of priority. Then Ignore everything else. If it’s important, somebody will either visit you in person or pick up the phone. Learn more on this from the folks at GetControl! and thought leader Bill Kirwin.
- Be an info snacker, not a glutton — Pick a time in the day to review internal and personal communications and refrain from checking them outside of that time. Doing it only once or twice a day keeps me focused on completing tasks instead of firefighting or web surfing.
- Take time to think, learn and engage others in debate – Our digital world has people in it. Talk to them. Fight with them. Challenge lazy thinking and welcome a challenge. Learn new perspectives. Let them soak in. Then hash it out with people you trust. You’ll learn more, wander less and actually remember the engagement.
- Unite relevant internal alerts and vital external knowledge in one place so you can scan, absorb and get on with your day. I’ve started using LinkedInToday for knowledge segmented by my interests, leveraging people I trust in my business network as relevance filters. I am also eating my own dog food for business relevance with the Attensa StreamServer. I won’t soak up your attention on what it does or how it works–unless you want me to–but suffice it to say, I have been able to stay more focused on what matters instead of getting bombarded by things that don’t. A great post from @geekygirldawn: How to Hack RSS to Reduce Information Overload also has some great tips and tools.
- Jot down key lessons of the day and then unplug — As a recovering journalist, I have been conditioned to be an unapologetic info pig. As a result, I have been known to make odd noises and skip a bath or two when doing large volumes of research. That said, I routinely dominate in Trivial Pursuit. Another bad side effect, however, is that I am rarely able to recall information that truly matters — like the street to turn on to pick my son up from school or my login information to this here WordPress blog. For that reason, I’ve started closing my day with 3 things I learned today so I can capture something specific about my trip into the digital abyss. Then, I work like hell to unplug myself from business until the next day. My wife will tell you I am failing miserably at this, but I am better at it than I used to be.
My Top 5 aside, the most informative and helpful advice I found on this comes from Clay Johnson via InfoVegan.com. His post How to Rebuild Your Attention Span and Focus is perpetually relevant. It caught my attention based on the premise of Managing Your Attention instead of managing information — something Clay notes we’ve been fighting since at least 1755 without resolve. One of many simple things he suggests to keep your mind from wandering onto the web while working: Unplug your mouse. Genius!
Favorite line: It is as much Twitter’s fault that you have a short attention span as it is your closet’s fault it doesn’t have any running shoes in it.
Until I interrupt you again,
Mark
@MarkAEvertz and @Attensa
Hi Mark,
I think your 5 steps will come very handy. I will give them a try.
Glad to offer it up for public consumption. Check back and let me know what works or other ways you’ve found keep you focused on the task at hand.
Best of luck!
Mark
nice share
Nice comment! And three smiles. Wow.
Unplugging my mouse won’t help Mark. I know way too many keyboard shortcuts! I do like filters and have created a lot of rules in Outlook to direct spam email directly to my delete folder which saves me the time of having to deal with it in “junk”.
I really like your suggestion to “Be an info snacker, not a glutton”. Sometimes, I’ll spend myself spending hours working without even making a dent on my to-do list. Not good! Thanks for the interruption.
Sherryl,
Thanks a lot for your thoughtful reply. Yep. Like everything else, we’re supposed to consume information in moderation. Saw an interesting article yesterday that hit that point on the head as well.
“Diet of emails, texts, tweets and status updates can drain the brain” Study – Health – DNA http://bit.ly/hk27BM
Looks like we’re on to something, eh?
Take care and keep reading/writing.
Best,
Mark
[...] can get greater context from Attensa here, and in the Attensa White paper Reducing Information Overload in the Enterprise, but the bottom [...]