Forget About Multitasking. The Key to Success is FOCUS.
As the story goes, Bill Gates first met Warren Buffett at a dinner hosted by Gate’s mother. During the meal, she asked everyone around the table to identify what they believed was the single most important factor in their success. Gates and Buffett gave the same one-word answer: “Focus.”
Their answer should not come as a surprise. After all, most successful entrepreneurs attribute their success to a dedicated — some would say fanatical — commitment to achieving a single goal. No interruptions. No side hustles. No juggling multiple balls in the air. Just focusing in and doing one thing better than anyone else.
Attention is Today’s Scarcest Resource
We live in a world in which we’re constantly bombarded by information. Sources range from billboards, direct mail, and retail storefronts to television, radio, magazines, smartphones, email, social media, push notifications, and more.
Studies by the American Marketing Association claim that the average consumer is exposed to more than 4,000 ads a day.
According to comScore, we spend 3 hours a day on our phones — that’s 90 hours a month.
Inc. Magazine reports that millennials are the worst offenders, checking their phones up to 150 times per day.
Why so much time? Partially because we’re continually sending texts — 32 texts per day, on average.
Add to this the constant interruptions we endure from friends, family and business associates and it’s easy to see why being able to stop and focus has become such a challenge.
We’ve Become Consumed by Multitasking
Today, rather than focus, we’ve become consumed with multitasking. It’s as if we’ve all bought in to the credo that the more jobs we take on, the more goals we set … the more chances we’ll have to succeed. Instead, our infatuation with multitasking has brought us to the point where when we have to focus, we’re unable to do so.
It Takes an Average of 23 Minutes to Get Back on Task
In a study from the University of California Irvine, researchers shadowed workers on the job, studying their productivity. Here’s what study lead Gloria Mark told Fast Company of the findings:
“You have to completely shift your thinking, it takes you a while to get into it and it takes you a while to get back and remember where you were…We found about 82 percent of all interrupted work is resumed on the same day. But here’s the bad news — it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task.”
Jonathan Spira, author of Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous to Your Organization, estimates that interruptions and information overload eat up 28 billion wasted hours a year, at a loss of almost $1 trillion to the U.S. economy.
He goes on the say that because of unnecessary, unwanted, and completely unproductive interruptions, between 40 and 60 percent of their time was completely wasted.
People who take on too many tasks at once report a stream of frustrations that include
Restlessness — You can’t sit still, need to move from one place to another, feel agitated, anxious, foot tapping, uncomfortable in the task, feel trapped.
Fatigue — You feel tired, can’t concentrate because feel sleepy, eyes begin to close, loss of energy, need to get up and move around to just stay awake.
Being Overwhelmed — You feel you have too much to do, too much on your plate, can’t figure out where to start first, want to throw up your hands and scream.
Boredom — Your mind continually wanders, always thinking of something else you have to do, someone you need to talk to, someplace you need to be.
Pressure — You constantly feel stressed about meeting a deadline and/or pleasing a boss or client with a particular quality of response, or within a certain time period which seems too difficult or unreasonable.
Focus Requires Mental Discipline
To focus, you need to train your mind to block out the dozens of distractions that surround you every day. What’s the best way for you to gain this type of focus? Try meditation.
Kelly McGonigal who teaches a class on The Science of Willpower at Stanford University, ranks meditation as the #1 way to increase willpower.
According to Kelly: “Practicing mindfulness meditation for a few minutes each day can actually boost willpower by building up gray matter in areas of the brain that regulate emotions and govern decision making.”
Identify, Then Eliminate Your Distractions
To focus on a specific task, you need to understand the specific distractions that can draw you away from what you need to do.
Are there people who constantly interrupt?
Let them know what you’re working on as well as the specific days or hours when you’ll be unavailable to them.
Do you work best when everything is quiet?
Then don’t try and work in an open office space or at a Starbucks. Instead find a room where you can close the door and shut out the noise of the world.
Do you get hungry while you’re working?
Make sure you eat well before you start working. That way, you won’t be getting up again and again to go to the refrigerator.
Create a Task Ladder
Thinking about all the work to be done can sometimes overwhelm us.
If that’s the case, don’t think of the whole project, just the endpoint. Visualize it as the top of the ladder. What rungs (tasks) do you have to climb to get there?
List them out, then approximate how long it will take you to accomplish each. Don’t cut it tight.
If you think a particular task should that three hours, give yourself four as a buffer. By breaking your project into smaller, sequential steps, each step becomes far less complicated and daunting.
Focus is the key to success: in business, in athletics and in life.
Yet most people find it difficult. 71% of people surveyed report frequent interruptions when they’re working. Only 29% say that they can block out everything else while working.
Does that sound like you?
