Stay Focused in the Chaos
Multi-tasking hampers your productivity, but that doesn’t mean you can only do one thing. In your life, many things are going on. If you are a Product Manager at Fave, you probably have four or five projects on your plate, all in various states. You have to talk to multiple stakeholders, digest the information and figure out how to deal with it.
Then there are personal relationships — partners, kids, parents, friends. You might have hobbies, either alone or a group with similar interest. Maybe you are working on side projects. Planning your financials. Learning new things or up-skilling. Improving your health and fitness.
There is no just one thing.
So how do you not multi-task when there are so many things in your life?
Focus is about presence. You are here, with all your attention to one thing at that moment. Now the “moment” could be any timeframes — 10 minutes, 1 hour, half a day, one week. You are the better judge of that. But the key is your presence at the moment.
To be present, you need to be able to remove everything out of the way, clear your path. Here are two tools and three habits that could help.
Tool #1: Roam Research
I used Roam Research exclusively for the past three months to take notes, plan, organise, and write my thoughts. Branded itself as a “note-taking tool for networked thought”, it is organic knowledge management.
I do not have to worry about organising my thought, I can quickly dump each piece of information and find how they relate to each other later. These networked information helps me to build an understanding of the idea or concept. This way, I don’t need to hold the statement at the back of my head, trying to digest it. I can focus on completing my task without worrying I might lose track of the idea.
Tool #2: mymind
We all been there, hundreds of browser tabs unclosed because we were afraid we might lose the information, or thousands of bookmarks that never been read. Technically, keeping the tabs open so you can read it later is one act of getting things out of the way for you to focus at task in hand, which is good. But it is hard to retrieve the information when you need it.
mymind solve this with good search engine and auto-tagging. Now I dump everything to mymind knowing that I can get it back when I need it.
Habit #1: Start with a fresh browser
Now that I am confident I can get everything back from mymind, I have no qualm with closing all tabs first thing in the morning. I start with a single calendar tab to plan my day and build it up from there. I won’t be bogged down by everything from the previous day.
Habit #2: Meditation
Like everything in life, you get better when you train. Same goes to focus. You need to train your mind. Meditation is a fantastic way to do this. If you tried meditation before, but it doesn’t work, don’t worry. There are many different ways to meditate, it’s not about sitting with your eyes close and not think of anything.
You can train your focus with meditation by focusing on specific sounds, or with eyes open and focus on the details of an object, or focusing on a feeling, an idea. I recommend Balance app for you to restart your meditation journey.
Habit #3: Write things down
Write down your ideas, write down your thought, write down your feelings, write down your dream, write everything.
You may reread them, or you don’t. It doesn’t matter.
What we want is to get the thought out of your head, so it stops lingering there and distract you. It also helps you understand it better by reading it from a third-person perspective. It helps you see the flaw of your reasoning if any. There’s also a benefit of increased searchability, you can’t trust your memory.
I hope with these tools and habits, you can increase your focus, improve your productivity, and most of all, be present.
Key takeaways:
- Focus is about being in the moment.
- Move things out of the way early.
- Use tools and new habits.
