What you pay attention to, becomes the experience of your life, and your experiences define the life you live. In other words, you must be aware of your attention to be able to live a beautiful life. In today’s world, so many experiences are blended, such as working from home or a train or a plane or a beach, and we can also watch our kids on a camera from work. Have you ever experienced the same?
Attention (awareness) in the now.
To manage stress better and to be productive, it is necessary to strengthen our attention management skills.
It is the practice of being present in the moment, flowing with life as it comes, and focusing fully to realise that you are a genius. Be intentional rather than reactive. It is the ability to remember that your attention is being diverted and to bring your focus to the activities you should choose. Rather than being distracted, you should be able to choose where to focus your attention at any given moment, based on your priorities and goals.
Being aware or focused leads to improved productivity. The ultimate result is being able to create a life of your choice. Exercising focus and being in the present moment is about being in control of your time and priorities
Aspirations
The most important thing leaders can do is to support their team members’ continuous growth through the power of mentoring and coaching.
Even if you are a passionate coach or a mentor but are not focused, you won’t have the impact and won’t reflect the values as desired. You always experience what you focus on. And your experiences become the reality of life. So if your attention continues to divert, your life will be full of the “experiences” you never intended to have.
So why don’t we get to experience what we want and create our chosen lives? Why is there such pain and confusion between the self we aspire to and the way we live our lives?
We live in a world with so many distractions, such as the internet, computers, internet-connected phones, and so many other devices that are always with us. These devices deliver a high volume of information and communication we couldn’t have imagined. There’s a lot more in life to divert our attention.
Let’s go back to our mentoring and coaching examples. As you start your day, focus on developing your team and make this your prime task every day. Why are we stressing about this so much? Because much too often even the best of intentions can be pushed to the side in the never-ending rush of crisis-of-the-day, emergency tasks, last-minute favours and other craziness that marks our workdays.
It is difficult to make things happen – even if they are very important and mean a lot to you. You have to work to make things happen. You can’t leave it to chance. The work environment is more often than not so busy that one is presented with task and task. One is forced to choose between what needs our attention now, what needs to be attended to later in the later or even the next day and most importantly, what is not worthy of our attention. All this adds up to make our experiences of the workday.
Choosing What You Attend With Care
This is where attention management offers a solution. It’s a wilful strategy that puts you back in control. Practising attention management means fighting back against distractions and creating opportunities throughout your day to support your priorities.
Firstly, be aware of external factors:
-Take command of your technology. Remember, technology is there to help you do your tasks better. It is there to it’s there to assist you and certainly not the other way around! Focus your attention by consciously choosing to shift away from email and “push” notifications – which are huge attention seekers and thus attention diverters. This will let you focus your attention on your tasks and activities for long stretches of time. Keep your phone silent and out of sight as much as possible.
-Be attentive to your surroundings. Set boundaries with others, especially in an open-office setting. If you cannot put up a do not disturb sign, then put on noise-cancelling headphones – most people take that as a hint that you are not to be disturbed and thus can focus your attention on the task at hand. If possible, go to another part of the office or another floor to get away – sit on the stairs if need be – anything that helps you focus and give your full attention. If things are really bad, you can try teaming up with colleagues to designate a certain time of day, or day of the week, as a “no distractions” day for everyone to do heads-down work.
But here’s an overlooked truth: Our productivity drops not just because of external interruptions but also because our attention span has reduced. Our brain has become accustomed to being distracted by pings and rings that define our frantic workplaces where there is a burning fire that has to be tackled now! For example – you don’t really have to check your email every few minutes. You do not have to answer every single email just because you saw it when you were emailing someone. Do not fall into the rabbit hole of checking and answering emails because you were looking for a document on your email account. Oh, it is so easy to get distracted! Focus your attention back on what you were doing. No distractions or diversions…period. Certainly do not get down to surfing the internet just because you find it difficult to say “I don’t know,” and it is hard to avoid the distracting temptation to “find out now.”
So you must also learn to regulate internal factors.
-Be aware of your behaviour. In this age of multi-tasking, master single-tasking. Focus your attention on only the task at hand. Set time boundaries on completing a task, thus giving it your full attention or until a designated stopping point. Take breaks throughout the day when you step away from your computer. Try to be gadget-free for some time in the workday – you can start with 15 minutes and then take it up another 15 minutes and stretch it up to as much as you want or can do so.
-Be aware of your thoughts. This is the toughest thing to do and it is for this reason that I am addressing this last. Minds are made to wander. Practice noticing when your mind is veering off in its direction and gently guiding your focus back to where you want it. You can apply this strategy even by searching online for information. It is so easy for our minds, our thoughts, and our brains to get lost or distracted that it takes training to control it. One has to become a monk when it comes to completing tasks. Protect your attention like it is the crown jewel.
Practising attention management will not eliminate distractions but the moment you are able to recognise when you are distracted, your “attention muscle” is built through habits like those above, you’ll start to reclaim your life and devote more of yourself to yourself. Don’t allow distractions to throw you off-course from your life purpose. Instead, be aware of your focus on living a happy, satisfied, and joyful life.