Focus Is Key?—?Also For Private Activities
Summer laziness helps you unwind and?refocus
I love summer laziness. Fewer meetings, fewer emails.
Since most of the population cannot take the whole two months of July and August off, I often use the summer period to do the stuff that I wanted to get done for a long time.
I spent the last seven days alone in Zermatt, working just for myself. Reading stuff I wanted to read for months. Calling my co-founder to discuss the next initiatives of our growing organization.
In the process of all that, I started thinking about what I should stop doing in the future. Not just for my professional activities, but also in my private life.
1. Re-Tooling
In the past few days, I had some good discussions with my executive team about setting up OKRs and creating a knowledge base for our software product. Both discussions initially tipped towards the dreaded “we need a tool for this”. Because we had the time, we could get those discussions back on the process track, before making any decision about if and what tool is required.
Reflecting on these discussions during a short evening walk around Zermatt village reminded me about how much time I spent evaluating new productivity tools in the past. And how much more time I spent migrating from one to the other.
I decided to stop re-tooling. Both in our company and in my private household, we are equipped with adequate productivity tools. So there is no need to spend any time evaluating and trialing new productivity tools.
2. News
There isn’t a better time than summer laziness to stop consuming news all the time. A live ticker on the current heat wave. An oh-so-little scandal of a member of local government. A celebrity is on vacation in Monaco. The latest corona infection numbers. Putin will probably close the gas tap in the coming winter.
Is it worth losing focus all the time by checking news portals and getting bedazzled by irrelevant information?
I decided to stop checking news portals all day.
I read The Economist’s weekly edition, bookmarking what articles I want to read at the beginning of the week. And I do the same for a local newspaper and Medium each day. That should be enough to stay informed and up-to-date.
3. Social?Media
Same thing as for news. Most of the content on social media is pure distraction and takes more energy from you than it gives back.
I deleted all my social media accounts except for LinkedIn. And on LinkedIn, I rigorously started unfollowing people who post stuff I am not interested in.
Last but not least, I started checking LinkedIn only once a day?—?in the morning, as it might have some messages relevant to my work. And I can do it on the computer, so gone is the LinkedIn app on my phone.
Focus is so easily lost by checking social media statuses all the time.
4. Crypto
By choice, I am interested and involved in several activities. And I am also a person who likes talking to other people, especially people with nerdy tech interests.
That’s how I got loosely acquainted with Crypto. I never traded more a 5 EUR, but I still followed the topic.
If you want to do something as complex as crypto seriously, you will have to invest significant time. Since I can’t invest significant time in any topic, I decided to completely drop crypto from the topics I spend time and attention on.
Conclusion
Of course, you can’t be super-focused all the time. But if you need to unwind from an intense working session?—?don’t go to news and social media portals. Look outside the window or go for a short walk instead.
Growing a company ?? in troubled times ???? is a marathon.
As a tech entrepreneur ??, active reserve officer ??, and father of three ??????, I can help you with ?? practical entrepreneurship and resilience advice for all aspects of life. To the point ??, no fluff, because entrepreneurs are busy.
When I’m not busy, I get my rest and inspiration in the beautiful mountains ??? around Zermatt ????.