Gauri Chhabra
A few days ago, a technology geek in my company asked me-“I have been trying hard to read a book on SharePoint from the past few days, but to no avail. I read through a few paragraphs and then find my thoughts being drifted towards something else, so much so, that after sometime I have to mentally shake myself up to continue reading. I just cannot concentrate. Why?”
There is another star performer in the group who voiced a similar concern- “I spend all day being active, yet at the end of the day, none of my tasks is complete. What happened?”
Do you have a similar problem? If so, you are also caught in the destructive attention loop- you are losing focus. We all are caught in the same at some time or the other. This typically occurs when we are near any device that produces alerts, with cell phones and email programs being two of its primary culprits.
How is starts?
Let me explain you how this disruptive loop of lack of focus starts. You’re working on a report when a message arrives on your cell phone. What do you do? Most of us instantly stop what we’re doing, reach for the phone and check the new message. Next we see the other person is online and we spend a fewminutes to chat via text. No worries, right? Wrong.Studies show that when you are focused on a task and get distracted, it takes a full 17 minutes to get fully focused again. 17. Minutes. Now think how many times a day you’re distracted like this. It’s like trying to go for a run while stopping every two minutes to re-tie your laces. You’re burning effort but never moving forward by far. Worse still, when you think you’re paying attention, it’s actually lack of focus.
It is a vicious cycle:
One of the most dangerous aspects of lack of focus is that we create it and then it becomes a vicious cycle. Here’s how: Think about how you get better at doing something. You practice. But it doesn’t matter whether you’re practicing a positive activity or a negative act. Each time a device sounds and we rush to answer, we are essentially practicing distraction, and the more we practice, the better we get.Instead of building our power to focus we decrease it, and by doing so we are responsible for its growing strength.
It gets worse over time:
Once you get in the loop of lack of focus, it gets worse over time. It’s like a cognitive blindness that becomes a perceptive ignorance, invisible to all. As humans, we tend to move to routine automation as quickly as possible in every act we repeat to avoid being overloaded by the mental focus it takes to achieve conscious tasks.For example, when you first started driving or reading, these activities took great effort. But today you perform the acts without thinking. They have become a routine. In the same way, the act of jumping to check or respond to our devices has become a routine that we perpetuate without conscious thought.
It depletes attention time:
If you continue with this game of multi -tasking, you would slowly deplete your attention span to the point we make allowances for it. You would not be able to concentrate for long periods of time. When you say that- you are in vogue. Once you get the kick of being in vogue, you feel that you have a recognized problem, you can simply excuse it away instead of solving it. You develop an insatiable appetite for shorter video clips and start absorbing information in sound bites.
The marketplace makes allowances for our shrinking attention, and we blithely continue to dilute our attention haywire.
Kills workplace productivity:
At work place, your time is valuable. You may likely even charge for your work by the hour. So, for example, suppose a client expects you to produce a report or complete a project in five hours. You will bill them for five hours of your time or for a five-hour project bid to produce the report.Now as you sit down to write the report you receive an average of three phone alerts and two email notifications So if you stop work and attend to each interruption, you’ve responded to a total of five distractions.Using the 17-minute rule, it takes 5 x 17 – a total of 85 minutes – to get fully back on track after the interruptions. In this case, a 5-hour task has now taken an extra 1:25 hours. But you’re only able to bill the client for 5. You’ve thrown in an extra 28% of your time and effort for free. Slowly, before you even realize, it would start killing your productivity.
Lose personal touch:
If you continue to be at the beck and call of every alert that comes your way, you will lose personal touch with your colleagues. Have you noticed work colleagues who would rather ping each other than speak even when they work next to each other? What was once a humorous technological novelty is now biting back. The eroding effect on workplace productivity is obvious.
This has nothing to do with their internal capacity or inherent communication ability. These people have practiced paying more attention to their electronic devices than to anything else. Technology becomes their primary mode of communication. They lose the ability to connect with real people.
At a restaurant you have likely seen the ultimate demonstrations of lack of focus – groups of people who have no active conversation until a message arrives. As a society we never fully disconnect from our devices and end up spending most of our time in mixed mode. We check email while walking the dog or even as we play with our children. We’re never fully engaged in what we’re doing, and we never get the restorative downtime we need.
Restoring focus:
Once you realize what the loss of focus is dong to you and your productivity, restoring t would be easy. Think about how the weight of your body feels in your chair. Are you completely comfortable? Could you be more comfortable? If you shifted your weight around, you might be even more comfortable then you are now. Now think about your feet and how they feel as they rest on the ground. Once again, if you shift them around, your feet may become more comfortable still.
What you’ve just experienced is a shift in perception. You weren’t even thinking of your body or your feet a few minutes ago. But once you became aware of them you were able to change. You can do the same thing with lack of focus. As of today, you know how it works and you can recognize it as it happens. But to overcome the effect, you must practice.
Notice how you react physically when your phone rings. Do you rush towards it like a robot? Try to avoid the temptation. If you can’t, then at least take notice that you are reacting to distractions in an unhealthy way. Another question to ask yourself is whether every call you receive is urgent. Do you have to respond to every text or email instantly? Realistically, the answer is no. So don’t rush to the phone just because it is ringing. Complete your tasks at hand first. Practice ignoring distractions.
Also try to set a time of day between perhaps 12 noon and 2:00 p.m. where you spend 20 minutes returning emails and calls. You’ll soon see that many seemingly urgent issues have handled themselves. Perhaps you don’t need to be “on call” every hour.When you’re in the middle of a task, finish it first. The phone can wait.Try to get comfortable with letting calls go, or waiting for at least five minutes before attending to email. Then increase these times slowly. You can practice and reinforce the art of not being distracted by your phone. Learn to treat your phone like it no longer owns you.
With a little awareness, practice and action, you’ll soon be able to restore your focus. It is like getting back in shape- your family and your colleagues will like you for it.
Above all, you will be more at peace with yourself… and that’s what matters…
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