Can you repeat the question, I was on mute…

Ever heard someone in a telco say something like “please repeat the question, I was on mute”. I have and to make matters worse, I have said it myself. Being on mute is not a reason for not hearing, but it is a good way to be totally distracted and doing five other things and then you suddenly hear your name and realize you have no clue where the discussion is. Focus, interest and time spent on an issue is crucial to get good results, but those things are getting more and more rare.

I was told that Churchill and the team around him spent 5 days(!) discussing, pondering and arguing about how to handle Hitler before they decided to strike back. My understanding is that they spent most of that time together in the bomb shelter and no one was on mute. Today, most of the pressing challenges are given 3 minutes before you are expected to send out a perfectly worded tweet with your solution… Am I the only one that is surprised that not more bad decisions are made and communicated?

The one thing we all have an equal amount of is time, as the saying goes. Well, my time has become increasingly more discrete over the last couple of years. Discrete in the sense that it is chopped up in ever decreasing chunks with less and less time for focus. Just writing this article, I am not even three paragraphs in and have been distracted 3 times already… How am I supposed to think deep thoughts and then formulate stringent and interesting sentences that you want to keep reading when I am not able to keep my focus for more than a few minutes at a time? When I was younger, I had more time per issue, now I have more issues per time.

Every issue I work on gets less and less attention, but the issues are not getting easier. This is the same at work as at home and in moments of clarity, I realize that I must dedicate more and longer focused blocks of attention to my kids, my wife as well as the important issues at work. Even though I realize it, I struggle to act as I should. The messages, the emails, the tweets, the noise around and everything else that begs for attention makes me lose focus, deteriorates my relationships as well as my performance. I am pretty sure there were no emails, messages, tweets, Netflix shows to binge watch and very few phone calls to disturb Churchill and his team when they were solving the issue of what to do with Hitler.

Knowing and doing is very different. I know I should focus more, turn off the notifications and be fully in the moment, but it is difficult, the notifications and the distraction they bring are so attractive. I talk the talk, but I struggle to walk the walk. I have started to train myself to focus, to stay in one task until it is done, to play with my kids with full focus, but it is difficult. I can’t even write this article with full focus even though I intended to write an article about the importance of focus and dedication. I am writing this article to provide my view on the lack of focus, dedication and enough time spent on important issues, but also to put pressure on myself to practice what I preach.

I will, and you should to, stop reacting and responding immediately to texts, emails, phone calls and other things that distracts me. I will also stop jumping into social media when I am between things, but rather use the down-time to do actual thinking, let my mind wander, think about things, big and small and most of all, I will be present in all things I do with the people I am doing it with. This is a promise. It feels scary, but I know it is necessary or I will never succeed in being a good father, husband, leader and business man.

Now I will post this on LinkedIn and hope you all get distracted, read this and then respond to it with your best tips on how to stay focused and dedicate time to important things so the distraction can continue and next time I am on mute in a telco, I will read your responses ??