Productivity - Staying Focused in an Always on World
With so many interruptions coming at us throughout the course of an average day-messages, email, phone calls, tweets, flashing banners, and on and on-how can we possible stay focused? Think about these statistics:
We see more advertisements in one year than people of 50 years ago encountered in their entire lifetime. In 1971, the average American saw 560 advertisements per day. Today, we see around 3,000 advertisements each day-and encounter about 5,000 more messages from phones, emails, IM's, wall posts, tweets and more.
According to Internet monitoring company Pingdom, Twitter users send an average 27.3 million tweets per day, resulting in an annual 10 billion tweets.
Also from Pingdom: worldwide, an average 247 billion email messages are sent every day.
More than 1 billion instant messages a day are sent via Facebook alone!
The human mind has 60,000 thoughts per day. In 1971, distractions controlled not even 1% of our minds (i.e., thoughts); today, advertisements and other distractions control 13.33% of our minds.
Chances are at least even that you've recently talked with friends and family about problems involving lack of time, a decreased ability to concentrate, a rising feeling that you just can't get it all done. I know I've had plenty of conversations like that, and I'm having them more frequently. I've always been a busy person, but the concept of "busy" changed its pace a couple of years ago.
Now, almost everybody I know is constantly racing to keep up with commitments. In the process, many seem to be giving up time they used to spend reading, indulging in creative (and creatively restorative!) hobbies, day-dreaming, chit-chatting about nothing, exercising...
But is there really anything we can do about the killer pace of modern life?
A fellow named Scott Scheper thinks there is. Not too long ago he was the kind of hyper multi-tasker who made 30-second shifts between a dozen or more ongoing tasks. But in his early twenties he became involved in a basement start-up that ultimately became a multimillion-dollar company, and found that if he was going to succeed he had to change. That change, he says, "was done through mastering the art of simplicity and focus."
And now Scheper wants to help others get focused. To do so, he has put together a large undertaking: he's writing a book about focus and posting it for all to read for free on a website called How To Get Focused. As as he posts chapters online, he welcomes comments, insights, criticisms, and editing suggestions from the world--that's why he refers to what he's writing as a "living book." In this way he can make changes, shaping the book to become increasingly effective. The chapters may eventually be compiled into a printed book, but for now it's free.
Scheper takes a tough approach, but then "fighting our dopamine-driven age of distraction and getting your focus back" is a tough act to pull off. According to him, most people think the ability to focus has something to do with buying the right tools or discovering workable strategies. But: "It's not what gadgets and tools you need, it's what you need to forget. It's what you need to abandon. you need to give up tools that have stolen mind-share. You must learn to abandon and harness tools that have taken your mind"
Here's what he promises you'll learn:
This book will take you a series of processes, modules and lessons that will retrain not just the way you think or act. It will recalibrate the lens through which you view life. Change takes time. Lots of it. Sometimes it will seem like changing to become a more focused person is taking too long. For me, this was the case. Even after two weeks of attempting every day to establish focused habits, I would relapse, getting sucked into watching the Real Housewives of Orange County when it was "accidentally" on. Know this. The human body has an innate, amazing way to adjust. Your body and your mind are one. You'll be going through changes as if you're having withdrawals. That's where Hard Work comes in and that's where focus comes into play. If you're the type of person that rarely finishes something you start, this journey is for you. But again, the Hard Work is for you.
Some of my favorite chapters include:
8 Things Everybody Ought to Know About Concentrating, which explores the science behind concentration and illuminates the thrilling rush that occurs when we multitask.
Get Things Done Like a Zen Master. A very insightful chapter that makes you think about getting back to basics in your approach to work and life.
57 Questions You Should Ask Yourself consists of extremely thought-provoking questions designed to make you tackle the kind of things you should (but rarely do) think about. This is a list to work with every so often, something you could keep around for years.
Focusing in the Face of Emotions. Most of us can certainly learn to do better with this one.
How to Audit Your Gadgets for Focus is a chapter you may not like, because it makes you take a look at your gadgets, figuring out which ones are useful-and which aren't. And that, according to Scheper's way of looking at things, is most of them.
If you look at How To Get Focused as a traditional book, it's easy to criticize. The "chapters" don't seem to follow each other in a logical fashion, for one thing. Many sentences lack polish. It lacks the professional touch.
On the other hand, that's what makes it valuable. The information hasn't gone through a publication-ready filter. It's helpful, straightforward and honest. It's one man's unvarnished take on the distractions of our age, and he doesn't try to prettify what he sees as problems. Nor does he make his tips bland in order to appeal to the widest common denominator.
This "living book" contains many valuable methods for focus and simplifying your life. And if you have to work a wee bit to lay your hands on it all, well, that's a small price to pay.
Written by Suzanne Rodriguez
For more articles by this author visit - http://www.taskwise.com/blog.php
We see more advertisements in one year than people of 50 years ago encountered in their entire lifetime. In 1971, the average American saw 560 advertisements per day. Today, we see around 3,000 advertisements each day-and encounter about 5,000 more messages from phones, emails, IM's, wall posts, tweets and more.
According to Internet monitoring company Pingdom, Twitter users send an average 27.3 million tweets per day, resulting in an annual 10 billion tweets.
Also from Pingdom: worldwide, an average 247 billion email messages are sent every day.
More than 1 billion instant messages a day are sent via Facebook alone!
The human mind has 60,000 thoughts per day. In 1971, distractions controlled not even 1% of our minds (i.e., thoughts); today, advertisements and other distractions control 13.33% of our minds.
Chances are at least even that you've recently talked with friends and family about problems involving lack of time, a decreased ability to concentrate, a rising feeling that you just can't get it all done. I know I've had plenty of conversations like that, and I'm having them more frequently. I've always been a busy person, but the concept of "busy" changed its pace a couple of years ago.
Now, almost everybody I know is constantly racing to keep up with commitments. In the process, many seem to be giving up time they used to spend reading, indulging in creative (and creatively restorative!) hobbies, day-dreaming, chit-chatting about nothing, exercising...
But is there really anything we can do about the killer pace of modern life?
A fellow named Scott Scheper thinks there is. Not too long ago he was the kind of hyper multi-tasker who made 30-second shifts between a dozen or more ongoing tasks. But in his early twenties he became involved in a basement start-up that ultimately became a multimillion-dollar company, and found that if he was going to succeed he had to change. That change, he says, "was done through mastering the art of simplicity and focus."
And now Scheper wants to help others get focused. To do so, he has put together a large undertaking: he's writing a book about focus and posting it for all to read for free on a website called How To Get Focused. As as he posts chapters online, he welcomes comments, insights, criticisms, and editing suggestions from the world--that's why he refers to what he's writing as a "living book." In this way he can make changes, shaping the book to become increasingly effective. The chapters may eventually be compiled into a printed book, but for now it's free.
Scheper takes a tough approach, but then "fighting our dopamine-driven age of distraction and getting your focus back" is a tough act to pull off. According to him, most people think the ability to focus has something to do with buying the right tools or discovering workable strategies. But: "It's not what gadgets and tools you need, it's what you need to forget. It's what you need to abandon. you need to give up tools that have stolen mind-share. You must learn to abandon and harness tools that have taken your mind"
Here's what he promises you'll learn:
This book will take you a series of processes, modules and lessons that will retrain not just the way you think or act. It will recalibrate the lens through which you view life. Change takes time. Lots of it. Sometimes it will seem like changing to become a more focused person is taking too long. For me, this was the case. Even after two weeks of attempting every day to establish focused habits, I would relapse, getting sucked into watching the Real Housewives of Orange County when it was "accidentally" on. Know this. The human body has an innate, amazing way to adjust. Your body and your mind are one. You'll be going through changes as if you're having withdrawals. That's where Hard Work comes in and that's where focus comes into play. If you're the type of person that rarely finishes something you start, this journey is for you. But again, the Hard Work is for you.
Some of my favorite chapters include:
8 Things Everybody Ought to Know About Concentrating, which explores the science behind concentration and illuminates the thrilling rush that occurs when we multitask.
Get Things Done Like a Zen Master. A very insightful chapter that makes you think about getting back to basics in your approach to work and life.
57 Questions You Should Ask Yourself consists of extremely thought-provoking questions designed to make you tackle the kind of things you should (but rarely do) think about. This is a list to work with every so often, something you could keep around for years.
Focusing in the Face of Emotions. Most of us can certainly learn to do better with this one.
How to Audit Your Gadgets for Focus is a chapter you may not like, because it makes you take a look at your gadgets, figuring out which ones are useful-and which aren't. And that, according to Scheper's way of looking at things, is most of them.
If you look at How To Get Focused as a traditional book, it's easy to criticize. The "chapters" don't seem to follow each other in a logical fashion, for one thing. Many sentences lack polish. It lacks the professional touch.
On the other hand, that's what makes it valuable. The information hasn't gone through a publication-ready filter. It's helpful, straightforward and honest. It's one man's unvarnished take on the distractions of our age, and he doesn't try to prettify what he sees as problems. Nor does he make his tips bland in order to appeal to the widest common denominator.
This "living book" contains many valuable methods for focus and simplifying your life. And if you have to work a wee bit to lay your hands on it all, well, that's a small price to pay.
Written by Suzanne Rodriguez
For more articles by this author visit - http://www.taskwise.com/blog.php
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