Focus – A Critical Success Factor

The ability to focus is a critical success factor for project managers, business analysts, and anyone else who is in a task-oriented position.

On the project level, it is costly when resources divide their attention between multiple projects. Stop, start, and stop again performance has an overhead. The same is true for individuals. Without focus as a power of mind, you are like a straw in the wind, randomly blown here and there.

The more you can focus without being distracted, the more likely you are to succeed at whatever you intend to do – whether it is to pass a test, get a job, complete a project task, write a proposal, get the most out of a meeting, or paint a picture.

Distractions

To be focused means that you can stay with or come back to the “object” you have chosen to focus upon in the face of distractions. Life is full of enticing distractions. They may be thoughts, feelings, sounds, images, or other people’s behavior.

Pleasant or unpleasant distractions grab your attention. When you are taken away by a distraction you go on a trip, a mental journey. If your ability to focus is strong, you can skillfully choose to go on that trip or stay focused on what you are doing. Alternatively, you may be unable to choose.

Train of Thought

Imagine being on a train heading home. The train pulls into a station and there is another comfortable-looking train across the platform. You get off your train and jump onto the new one, and off you go. Then you realize that this train isn’t as comfortable as it looked. You get off at the next stop just in time to get on another enticing train. Off you go. Until you become attracted to another even cooler train and off you go again.

You may never get home. But, maybe, you don’t care because you like riding trains or are having fun and seeing new sites. Or you get on a train that takes you on an unhappy trip into a dark and dreary place and you can’t get off until it reaches its last stop.

That is how the mind works. A thought comes up, you keep it going by thinking about it, adding details, and thinking about what should have or could have happened. You make up stories about the future or dwell on the past.

What Happens at Work

Take a more project management-specific example. You are assigned to write an explanation for why your project is late. You start writing and your phone pings notifying you of a text message.

It’s from a friend and you read it. Then you respond and are off into a conversation. You realize ten minutes later that you have not been writing your explanation. You go back to it but must remind yourself of where you were when you popped out and then get back into a “groove”.

Any interruption during the performance of a task is costly. There is the effort of winding down and ramping up. The less winding down the higher the cost of ramping up. That is why multitasking is frowned upon.

Sustain Focus

If the ability to decide what you want to think about and do is important to you and you are willing to do what it takes to give yourself a choice, then you need a method.

You can reduce distractions by finding a quiet space free from interruptions. Shut the door if you have one. Ask others not to disturb you. Turn off the phone, or if you can’t because you are on call, do what you can to filter calls and alerts.

But, even in an ideal workplace, your body and mind are still there to disturb you with thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations. Even the work you are doing can face you with opportunities to go down a rabbit hole. For example, you might dive into levels of detail when writing a summary or think about an interesting, but irrelevant concept suggested by some aspect of your task.

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Concentration and Effort

That is why cultivating concentration is so important. Concentration is the mental capacity to focus, to choose and stay with an object, overcoming the urge to follow distractions.

Concentrating to sustain focus requires resolve and effort. You must intend to maintain your attention on an object and make the effort to do it. Don’t expect it to be easy. You may be addicted to being distracted. It may be a deeply ingrained habit.

I am told that staying focused is even more difficult for those born into the age of the internet and social media than those who grew up without them. People have become addicted to short “hits” of attention-grabbing content and the immediate gratification of texts. Engineers and marketers have worked together to sustain this addiction to distractions and profit from it. They want you to get “hooked” on distractions.

Even though I was born way before the Internet Age, I can attest to how easy it is to get lost down a rabbit hole on Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube. One thing catches the eye and mind, and, after a few minutes, one thing leads to another and another. Before you know it, an hour has passed before something pulls you out of the rabbit hole.

It is hard to get unhooked – breaking habits is not easy.

How to Strengthen the Mind

To break the habits that keep you from focusing the way you want to focus, apply intention, effort, patience, mindfulness, and concentration.

Make the intention to apply the effort and patience required to cultivate the mindfulness that lets you know that you have been distracted and the concentration power to bring your attention to the chosen object.

Taking on meditation practice is a prescription for cultivating focus and choice. Go to https://self-awareliving.com/videos for videos on how to meditate. However, meditation is not a cure-all. People become discouraged when they start to meditate and are confronted with a “monkey mind”, the mind jumping from thought to thought. The meditation practice makes that quality more apparent. That is where persistent patience comes in. Keep observing the mind and coming back to a point of concentration and the monkey will be tamed.

Check out my book “The Peaceful Warrior’s Path: Optimal Wellness through Self-Aware Living” https://a.co/d/97LpYib for mindset and techniques to cultivate sustained focus and optimal performance.