Focus, Flow, and Friends

Focus, Flow, and Friends

I always plan for the New Year by undertaking the reflection and design activities I shared in The POSITIVE Lawyer newsletter last week. This year I’ve been inspired by Amanda Blessing, She Leads to also consider my themes for the year ahead.

I’ve settled on Focus, Flow, and Friends – it’s an F year for me…

Focus

The ability to be adaptable is more critical than ever as we find ourselves working and living in vastly different conditions.

The ability to be flexible enables us to be nimble and adjust to the new conditions more quickly.

The ability to be resilient will enable us to bounce back once this global crisis has passed.

The ability to be indistractable enables us to connect fully with every experience so we can mindfully maximise our productivity and joy!

The ability to focus and be indistractable is fundamental to my themes for this year. I love the concept and have drawn it from @Nir Eyal’s book Indistractable. It’s all about ensuring that you truly understand what is important to you and then truly focus on each activity. So, forget multitasking as it erodes your focus and productivity, instead, I’m going to plan and prioritise like I always do and then add in the concept of complete and utter concentration on each activity.

This means that when I’m working on a critical task, then I will only think about that task for the allotted time period. It also means that when I am spending time with friends and family that I will completely concentrate on them, rather than having half of my mind off thinking about work priorities or other things that I would like to do.

My aim is to dedicate my focus to one important thing at a time…

Flow

One of the best ways to ensure that you achieve a state of flow is to focus on your productivity habits. My primary professional focus is supporting lawyers to develop positive mindsets, and competencies in Legal Project Management and Legal Process Improvement. My primary personal focus is productivity

Here are my 10 habits of highly productive people -

• Be disciplined about the basics
• Maintain a healthy body and a positive mind
• Ruthlessly prioritise
• Focus on what is important, remove the unimportant
• Allocate time for the important things
• Use every minute
• Allocate time for rest and rejuvenation
• Get in the zone and stay in the zone
• Create the right environment
• Good enough is good enough

This year, I’ve taken it one step further into the concept of FLOW. This concept is highly personal and will mean different things to different people. For me, it’s all about replacing feelings of stress and time pressure with a sense of forward movement and the confidence that as long as I’m working on the right things then they will be completed at the right time.

Friends

When we wish to optimise our performance and positivity, social connection is just as critical as eating well, moving well, thinking better, and stressing less. Research shows that people who feel more connected to others have lower levels of anxiety and depression and that a lack of social connection is a greater detriment to health than obesity, smoking, and high blood pressure.

Since making a major life change back in February 2021 (when I moved from my home of 40 years in Sydney to a remote regional town of fewer than 4,000 people), I made a specific goal to make friends. This has taken time and effort, and there has been a period where I felt lonely or unsupported.

Now I have a vibrant social life and have made genuine connections. I know these lovely people will support me and I will be there to support them, as well as have lots of fun, food, and beverages along the way.

Strong social connection has been shown to increase the chances of a long life, strengthen our immune system and help us recover from disease faster. It also increases self-esteem and empathy.

Find out more

Here are the links to 3 articles that I wrote back at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the most recent upsurge in cases, they are just as relevant today!

Maintaining focus and building resilience – https://www.basaltgroup.global/maintaining-focus-and-building-resilience/

Make every minute count - https://www.basaltgroup.global/make-every-minute-count/

Staying in the zone - https://www.basaltgroup.global/staying-in-the-zone/