Hi I’m John Drury. I help professional business leaders achieve what’s important without losing what’s essential.
We live in an information age. I call it an “information overload age.” It’s so challenging.
It was calculated that a person alive in 2016 received in one day the amount of information that someone alive in 1900 received a whole life time.
It’s difficult to focus when you’re getting hundreds of emails a day. It’s stressful. It’s a source of migraine.
It’s challenging when all sorts of other people’s agendas are coming at you in all kinds of ways each day. But how do you focus? Because to do significant work you’ve got to focus and often focus very deeply to get anything done that’s going to be meaningful, that you’re proud of, that’s going to achieve something that’s lasting.
So a few suggestions, I’d encourage you to take ten minutes out of your day to think, to plan, and decide what your agenda is for the day before you check your emails and find out what other people’s agendas are.
And secondly, create a “focus time” for an hour or two, carve out some uninterrupted time. If you have to get out of the office and go to a cafe to do that, then do it. But carve out an hour or two where you can get on with your work where you’re not distracted, and you can deeply focus
And then thirdly, focus on one thing at a time. Multitasking has been proved to be unproductive even for women.
So the question we all need to answer each day, we need to ask ourselves and answer this question every day for ourselves, “what’s the one thing that I need to do today to move towards my goals, to achieving my goals?”
If you can answer that question, you take the time to think about what is the answer to that question, you’re going to be able to move forward and you’ll find a great ability to focus.
