Scrolling and Deep Work

This week we had the first "Best Practices & Development" meeting, these sessions are intended to train the Contracting team at Unitedlex on topics that help us have best practices to be more efficient, improve our communication with our colleagues, have a good work-life balance, and much more.

In this first session I decided to start with "Deep Work", the reason why is because most of us, especially the new generations, live in constant "Scrolling".

Scrolling is defined as the action of moving down or up in a document, but it also applies to social networks, Scrolling allows us to go from one story to another in a matter of seconds, going from someone who is painting to someone who fixes a car, to someone who is eating a cake,? a person dancing, and thus be able to keep jumping from one idea to another. This action of jumping from one idea, concept, image, or video to another is making our brain no longer be able to concentrate on a topic only, in the second it gets bored it wants to move on to another topic and another and another until it finds something that does not fill it for the next 2 minutes, people is turning on the TV and as soon as they find something to see they pick up the phone to watch something else.

But how does this affect us at work, first let's define "Deep Work" is defined as the action of working on something without the slightest distraction for a certain period, doing this has shown to increase productivity significantly to the extent that people with the ability to concentrate for long periods can bring a great differentiator to the companies. Many people consider that they can be away from the hustle and bustle or scrolling, without knowing that within the same job, we also have many factors that affect our productivity.

We can start the day ready to finish the review of a document that has been on our desk for several days and that we must send EOD. If we do not set some specific time for this activity, we will start with our first mistake, looking at our email, even when there is nothing relevant, more important than the time dedicated to that review, our brain will begin to think about the responses, what are we going to say in the meeting we just get invited, think about the person who is leaving the company, bottom line the brain will start to Scroll within all this information. As soon as we start with the work, someone will send us a message through the company's interface, we see a notification in our phone, we get thirsty, we get Pop-outs of new emails, it's someone's birthday in the office, you might remember that it is your anniversary that week, anything to scroll and keep you out of reviewing the document. The next thing you know is that you didn′t finish your work.

In many cases, the work done can be monotonous and boring, but it can also be interesting and exciting, even so, if we do not train our brain any stimulus can divert us from what we are doing, and return to the point of concentration that we had can take several minutes, now let's sum all the minutes that we are delayed by each stimulus received.

It is for all this that Deep Work is a practice that we should all implement, it is not a simple or easy process, we live in a world of constant stimulation and where we no longer know how to concentrate. To be able to achieve this type of work, you only need a lot of willpower and train your brain.

Set aside time in your work calendar to do Deep Work, during that period turn off your cell phone or restrict all notifications, use Do Not Disturb modes to not receive notifications of any kind, or even turn off these platforms. The ideal time is 60 to 120 minutes a day since the brain itself is a muscle as such it gets tired and needs rest. Starting with shorter times is the best way to start until you get a longer time, ideally after 45 minutes you give yourself a break, but with something that does not generate a major distraction.?

To achieve this, you must remember that our brain will seek to change activity as soon as it feels bored or overwhelmed by seeing only one topic because you must often accept the brain's boredom and continue with work. One detail is that this type of activity is not for doing superficial work and as such I mean answering emails, filling out data tables, or any activity that does not require 100% of our attention to finish it quickly and well.

Before closing the topic it is important to mention that productivity is not about dedicating many hours to work, but about taking advantage of the hours we work, and recovering the best way possible when we do not work, so at all times you must eat well, rest, sleep at your own time, balance in life is the main element to be able to obtain the highest possible productivity in our life.