Focus - Leo Babauta [29]
Also turn off your phone, Blackberry, iPhone, and anything else that might distract you from your Something Amazing.
Finally, clear away meetings and anything on your task list that will interfere with this one task. You can get to those other tasks later, but for now, you're going to work on nothing but this one amazing task.
step 3: focus on that Something Amazing
OK, everything is clear. Now you just need to focus on that Something Amazing -- that one task you chose that you're excited about, that's going to change your life in some small way.
Do this as soon as you can in the day -- not after lunch or late in the day, but as close to First Thing as you can. Either before you go into work or as soon as you get into work and can clear your desk. Don't wait until later, or things will pile up and you'll never get to it.
This is actually the step that most people have a problem with. They get the urge to check email or make that phone call or... do anything else, really. No! Stop yourself, take a deep breath, and remember why you chose this task. You're excited about it. Feel that excitement, and focus.
Even if that focus only comes for a few minutes, give it your best shot. You might give in to the urge to do something else, but then bring yourself back and see if you can't focus for a few more minutes. Repeat until you've worked a good chunk (30 minutes, an hour, two hours, half the day if possible) on your Something Amazing.
Do your best to either finish this Something Amazing, or a good chunk of it. If it's a big project that will take days, months or years, just finish a chunk that'll take at least an hour or two of your day.
When you're done, bask in the glory of your accomplishment.
If you have more time and energy, repeat the process. Work on your next Something Amazing. Keep doing this, working on exciting and amazing things, for the rest of your life.
2: single-tasking and productivity
"Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus."
– Alexander Graham Bell
Many of us grew up in the age of multi-tasking, where you couldn't call yourself productive if you weren't a good multi-tasker. We learned to always have several balls in the air at once -- while writing something on the computer, we had a phone call going, we were writing something on a notepad or paper form, we were reviewing documents, sometimes even holding a meeting at the same time. That's the productive worker, the effective executive.
When email and Instant Messaging and blogs and the rest of the Internet came along, multi-tasking went haywire. Now we're expected to do 10 things on the computer at once, still with the paper, phone, and meetings going, along with texting and Blackberry Messaging. Multi-tasking is no longer about being productive -- it's a way of living.
It's not a sane way of living, however, and it's not necessarily the most effective way of working either. A few notes on why:
Multi-tasking is less efficient, due to the need to switch gears for each new task, and the switch back again.
Multi-tasking is more complicated, and thus more prone to stress and errors.
Multi-tasking can be crazy, and in this already chaotic world, we need to reign in the terror and find a little oasis of sanity and calm.
Our brains can really only handle one thing at a time, and so we get so used to switching between one thing and another with our brains that we program them to have a short attention span. This is why it's so hard to learn to focus on one thing at a time again.
a single-tasking life
Imagine instead, a single-tasking life. Imagine waking and going for a run, as if running were all you do. Nothing else is on your mind but the run, and