By Penny Zenker
We live in a world of increasing distractions. Open area workstations encourage “got-a-minute?” meetings that never take a minute, your phone buzzing in your pocket with text messages, and increased email volume combined with pressure to check them right away…and this is only a few of the daily distractions we put up with!
These are all physical distractions, but what about the emotional distractions? Fighting with a family member, being passed over for the big promotion, and interpersonal conflict with a boss or colleagues pack on top of a poor nights sleep. No wonder we can’t concentrate these days.
Lets look and what “Focus” is actually composed of so that we can get it back on track when we go astray:
Strategic Focus: This means staying goal-oriented and keeping the big picture at the top of your mind. Ultimately, that means that your focus and what you are doing is aligned with your purpose and goals.
So if you have the goal of reaching $5 million in sales over the next quarter your focus would be on those sales strategies, and the processes that support them.
It’s worth noting here, that strategies are not tactics. Tactics are a specific action or task that may contribute to your strategy, but a strategic focus is trained on creating leverage to reach the “bigger picture”.
Mental Focus: This is your state of mind and the direction you focus and filter. Do you see the glass half empty or half full? Our filters are how we see the world, and determine how we will react or respond in any given situation.
For example, a leader with strong mental focus does not react emotionally in a conflict. They are able to see a stressful situation from multiple viewpoints.
At my productivity immersion events I lead the participants in an activity called “ABC”. In this exercise they are asked to consider a stressful or emotional situation that they are experiencing with another person. They examine it from their perspective (A), the other person’s perspective (B), and finally from that of a neutral 3rd party observer (C).
This is, at its core, an exercise in mental focus. Mental focus allows you to gain clarity and make decisions from a place of information, rather than emotion.
Attention of Focus: This type of focus is about being fully present. This means concentrating on and in the moment. Attention of focus means bringing 100% to the table. To use a sports metaphor, it’s treating every practice, training, and workout like it’s game day.
Many people think that the secret to productivity is effective multi-tasking, but nothing could be further from the truth! There is no such thing as EFFECTIVE multi-tasking. The reality is, real productivity is found in mono-tasking. That’s doing just one thing to the absolute best of your abilities.
Tasks will get done quickly, efficiently, and with extremely high quality. That’s attention of focus, and you’ll be amazed how much just cutting out the multi-tasking will change your productivity levels and decrease distractions.
When you learn to fully manage and align the 3 types of focus, and create a fully focused environment for you team, conflict, stress and overwhelm will decrease dramatically and productivity will increase 10 fold.
You have the power to put these to work for you right now! Visit www.p10app.com for additional resources, and check out my book “The Productivity Zone: End the Tug of War with Time” for an even deeper look at Focus.
If you are ready for the greatest transformation in the shortest amount of time sign up for one of my 2-day productivity immersion events…It’s a choice you can feel good about!
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Penny Zenker is a productivity expert, strategic business coach, international speaker and trainer, and best-selling author of “The Productivity Zone“. Her P10 Productivity Accelerator System is based on her extensive experience as a successful entrepreneur, and as a Tony Robbins Coach, coaching highly successful business leaders in their roles, relationships and building culture. She will challenge you to think differently and inspire you to be your best. Most importantly, her easy to understand frameworks make implementation fast and easy. Reach Penny by telephone at 484-362-7228 or via email at [email protected].
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Top photo credit: Archambeau via photopin (license)
