Let's stop training our brain to be dumber

So from every interruption, it takes between 20 to 40 minutes to get back into deep concentration, because a part of your mind is actually held back in the previous topic.

As the book says, in an era were content is abundant, attention is scarce, and content consumes the attention of the reader. I love that inversion!!

This means focus, attention and intention become the most valuable skills to develop, especially because flow follows focus (another great book on that 'The Rise of Superman').

So, building habits that keep you focused from outside distractions, and inside temptations is critical. Actually, every time you switch tasks you are training your brain to be less focused, less engaged, and you end up taking poor decisions.

Because this training makes the brain value change, and new information, way more than IMPORTANT information.

And to build the habit of focus, attention and intention, one of the most important things is to say no. NO. FUCKING NO!! Ok you don’t have to say it like that, but you really need to say no. I follow a makers vs. managers time scheduling approach, leaving my mornings to do my most productive work -focused maker work-, and afternoon to schedule meetings.

It’s super hard to do when I stay in the team’s table. I love the table by the way, because we are all together there and colocation makes great ideas pop up; but it needs to be controlled, or it becomes a source of distraction. Only today I had to say no 4 times in 2 hours. That’s a lot! GIVE ME BACK MY 40 IQ POINTS!! FUCK!!

Ways of saying no can be ‘not now, please give me xx time’, or ‘can you send me an email and I will answer back’, or ‘can we leave it for our 1 to 1?’ Whatever you do, say no if you are focusing on your critical work. Or hide on the other side, like I do ??.

But I have to say, beyond external distractions, it’s mastering the monkey mind the one that is hardest in my POV. Because you start focusing, things get hard, you need to think, stop, analyze, figure out; and then you are like ‘oh wait, maybe I have an important email coming in…’

Fucked you are! You go to emails, get derailed completely, and when you snap out your apparent busy morning clearing the inbox (why do we want that so bad??), you lost your morning, didn’t get your priority 1 done, and it’s time for lunch.

Here’s a quote I love: ‘Email inbox is like having a to do list everyone can populate.’ Genius.

We resort to distractions in many (less apparently productive) ways like social media, texting, following notifications, going for a smoke etc. And this is REALLY hard to manage. As James Clear and many others have pointed out, our willpower is finite (and for these things quite small I would say).

So, the best way forward is to set up the environment in a way that you minimize the potential for distraction and interruption. This means phone in airplane mode (I hide it behind my laptop because if I see it, it’s too tempting… like the Bugs movie ‘don’t look at the light!! -I can’t, it’s so beautiful’), all notifications out (for life by the way), noise cancelling headphones with binaural beats or classical music, shut down email, and focus.

What to focus on?? Great question. The tasks/projects/things that will have the biggest impact in your goals, which as the book states, is what you are paid for! Think about it… how much work do we do that we aren’t actually paid for… it’s just organizational or inertia bullshit we come to think is important because of the motions.

Anyway, the best way to determine what to focus on is to define it… the previous day! So you spend 30 min aligning your 3 biggest goals for the quarter, with your 3 biggest goals for the month, with your 3 biggest goals for the week, and then for the day. And doing it the day before helps you leave with a sense of clarity (hopefully, not with ‘oh shit, I’m late already’), and allows you to start the morning fully focused.

Importantly, it diminishes the mental load for the next day, so you hit the ground running.

So my new mantra is Attention - Focus - Intention (now that I see it here, it seems like intention should come first but... I like it this way better).

The book really helped me, and I will share more ideas as they come to me… and I get the fucking time :D!! Hoping it will be useful, and please share your ideas too!