I know that the pandemic was very disruptive to our lives and to our careers. It is over already. Okay for the most part is over, although some may still be concerned. The Pandemic and time away from the past routines changed people’s lives or allowed one to change, and for many you learned new things, developed new habits, or entered into new realms completely.
Many have not returned to work, may never return to the workplace on a regular basis, or in-fact have started something new altogether. Maybe you retired? If you haven’t like the rest of us, it’s probably long past time to get back to it, and to a level where you can make a difference.
One thing that appears to be missing in my life today, which being now long past the pandemic, is that old focus I once had to my career, that dedication I once had to the work that I used to enjoy. I’m not “quiet quitting,” (the trend where employees put in a minimal amount of effort just to get through the workday), but I’m not giving it my all anymore either.
So, I sought out the idea of trying to recapture that drive I had for the work. Remember, leadership requires discipline, but dedication is a personal effort.
You can recapture it
Are you missing that old focus on your career, that dedication you once had to the work that you used to enjoy? You can recapture it.
I’d like you to think about the importance of recapturing focus time at work.
You know in your bones that some projects require long stretches of concentrated effort, an undisturbed block of time to make real progress. Experts call this “deep immersion” and unfortunately we’re not always able to get as much of this scheduled into our professional rhythms as we need.
I am particularly impacted today by my lack of deep immersion. Some of my best work comes from dedicated quiet time, where I put on my head phones and block out those around me.
The quiet of home is something that I do miss now that I’m back at work. but the advantage to being in the office is that I am also in a place at work where I am showered, dressed, and ready to be a professional for the day. Seated at my desk, I am in a workspace designed to keep me focused.
You need Time and Creative Thinking
Now at work, everything in your normal workday will vie for your time. Distractions abound, whether meetings, training, teleconferences, visits, vendors, calls, or drop-ins. We didn’t get the drop-ins from home…
Too often we fall prey to e-mail inbox sickness—the equivalent of a teenage texting or social media obsession. You know what I’m talking about, the magnetic pull to attack the bolded black, the anxiousness to stay in the loop, every minute. Today’s youth calls this phenomena FOMO, or fear of missing out.
If the measure of your output is how many e-mails you clear or create in a day, then you are using the wrong metric. In fact, I believe that email is probably the worst of the work tools we have today, as it takes away from our creativity and makes us concentrate on what someone else or many someones want us to do, rather than to focus on what is most important to you, your career and your work. Your to-do list is shattered.
According to an article by Neen Jameson on managing email distractions, “emails are requests from other people who want YOUR time and ATTENTION to accomplish THEIR objectives.”
Maybe you are thinking about what you want to accomplish, but you mistakenly open your inbox when you first get there and get either distracted or redirected immediately. You lose your focus and your plan for the day. Don’t let this happen, turn off email notifications if you can. Experts say only look at email at fixed times each day, at the same time, when you are ready.
Again, according to the article, and her favorite strategies to manage email distraction one of the recommendations is:
“Bounce them back. If you use Gmail, this one might be the answer you’ve looked for. Boomerang for Gmail is a great service to manage emails by allowing you to bounce emails back to you when you want to answer them and write emails and schedule delivery for another time. Helps to keep that inbox overwhelm at bay.”
The Multitasking Fiasco
Trying to perform in a constant state of fragmented multitasking produces weaker results than we know or care to admit. Some positions do thrive through multitasking, like managing daily operations for instance, but for most of us there is a penalty to multitasking. The penalty for repeatedly breaking your concentration is chronic scatter-braining and an ever-declining ability to truly focus.
Experts say there is a mental tax every time the mind has to reorient itself. They call it “cognitive interference” and it prevents the brain from consolidating knowledge.
The long-term effects are a weakened memory and low overall coherence. We are not leaving our brains with enough dedicated time to thoroughly process incoming information.
The danger is that we end up settling for a partial understanding of our complex problems and shallow solutions to our most significant challenges. For me it also makes me give up sooner and at times shortcut the conclusions or at least a few of the details in my conclusions. My to-do list helps me focus on what is important and helps me have to dedicated time I need to concentrate.
Regarding time and creative thinking, regaining control means disciplining yourself and your respective teams. Schedule time for deep and creative study on issues that truly matter to the business or its mission—requires longer blocks of time on just one thing.
We all need to know how to juggle, but we also need fenced off, imaginative, and critical thinking time to focus in-depth on things that count.
Future Focus
Finding the love of your craft, the thing that you enjoyed about work and profession, requires gaining back some of those old habits. Maybe adding new ones or efficiencies in addition that allow you to get quicker immersed in you work and still have time for the new things that you love requires discipline on your time.
I commend you for taking the time to read this, as it says you are ready to rededicate yourself to your profession. Thanks for reading, now get a plan, a to-do list and concentrate on what is important.
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