While I have always been focused in pushing myself along professional, personal, and physical dimensions, it’s only been recently where I’ve identified the fact that one’s ability to focus is what ultimately matters when it comes to taking on harder challenges.
When I was in high-school, I had a desk that had four small storage areas located towards the rear of the primary work surface. These areas were originally designed to hold small items such as envelopes, tape, and writing instruments, but they frequently attracted many other items that I simply didn’t know what to do with.
While my workspace was fairly well-kept, I found myself distracted by these random items that would find their way within or adjacent to the work area. To alleviate this, I built a wooden structure that encapsulated the work area and allow my mind to focus on the work instead of these random belongings. I also went as far to purchase ear protection headphones (!) in an attempt to eliminate, or at least further reduce, all distraction.
This “physical barrier” strategy had a positive effect on my ability to produce, although I recall struggling internally whether all of this was really necessary. After all, my friends seemed to focus reasonably well void of such scaffolding.
Over the next two decades, I continued to refine my ability to focus and made steady improvements across fairly diverse contexts. However, I always felt that more could be done.
Several years ago, after realizing that the vast majority of my time appeared to be spent compiling and responding to emails, I decided to try a new approach; I signed up with an online service called RescueTime.
The premise behind RescueTime is that it assumes that you spend most of your time on the computer, yet you aren’t really sure how much time you are spending on activities that add real value.
RescueTime monitors the applications that you are using and the time spent on each. It identifies, with your help, those applications that are considered “productive” (e.g., Adobe InDesign) and those that are “distracting” (e.g., YouTube). Further classification ability is also provided for those who wish to dive deeper into the underlying data.
The first year’s score came as somewhat of a surprise: 52% productive
RescueTime confirmed my suspicion, and I felt good knowing that improvements were not only desired but necessary. I decided to take action through two simple tactics:
- Tactic #1: Send less email. The less email I send, the less I’ll receive. Volume problem solved.
- Tactic #2: Stay out of email completely, and turn off all notifications. Distraction problem solved.
This didn’t mean that I stopped sending email, but I found that what I was really interested in doing was thinking critically, and I accomplished this through writing. The solution? I replaced Outlook with Evernote.
Now I had a tool for writing versus a tool for communication. Both are necessary, but recognizing this difference is what really matters.
Using these two simple tactics, my productivity score improved nearly 30% over the next 4 years, and I am just getting started.