Hi this is Cyril from Work Smarter Live Better. In this short video, I want to discuss with you one key topic, which is focus, and one simple advice how to improve it.
Since my book Work Smarter Live Better becoming your best seller. By the way, thank you for this. I’m often invited as a guest speaker. I do a speech about working smarter, personal productivity, efficiency and effectiveness, time management, and one thing that amaze me is when I choose a topic of focus, I choose few topics normally, but when I choose a topic on focus, how much it really resonates to everyone. Whatever company they are working for, whatever level on the company they are, whatever industry, and around the world, I’ve done a speech around the world and every time I talk about focus, everyone says “That’s me.” There’s a lot of research in the last 50 years about the importance of focus and mindfulness.
One thing is amazing how everyone agree on the importance of focus. When you do research on high performance, whether it’s the business world, whether its athletes, gold medalists, whether its scientists, noble prizes, wherever they are top performers when you try to understand one of the key thing for top performer is focus. This ability when they do something to be 100% focus on it. Let’s put that in a pile with the lovely business world that we are all in. A lot of people working in an open plan. We all spend our time with email binging, with sms, with the phone ringing, and with people interrupting.
I’ve even see a survey one day saying the average concentration span of someone enough is 3 minutes. Every 3 minutes, your concentration is going to breaking up.So I want to start with one advice on this one. My advice is simple, protect. There are times when you really need to protect yourself. There are time when you say “ I’m going to focus on this and for half an hour it’s going to be me and this topic and nothing else. How to do this? Well, there’s a few simple advice on this one.
My first one is book a meeting with yourself. How to protect? First advice, book a meeting with yourself. have an agreement with yourself, go in your diary and say for half an hour I’m going to back a meeting with myself and do it. Isolate yourself. Find a way, find and environment that works. It could be, I have some of my clients saying “I’m going outside working from home from time to time. It could be, hide yourself in a floor or room that people don’t know you. It could be going down to the coffee shop and start working on it. Find your way. Turn off your phone. That’s something obvious. And I’m going to be harsh on this one, close your inbox. It could be half an hour or you close your inbox and you are checking email. And even be careful with your mobile phone. Your mobile phone should be either switched off or your email in your mobile phone should be on pull not push which means that email are not pushed into your mobile phone as soon as they arrive. They are only pulled into your mobile phone when you asked for them.
This is this week’s tip for Work Smarter Live Better. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you apply it and put into practice. If you like it, press the like and leave a comment. And I love to hear what’s your tip to keep focus. Thank you very much and have a lovely day. Cheers!
