Coach Carol: Your attention please!

Personal development coach, chartered accountant and NLP practitioner Carol McLachlan explains why we’re all suffering from a lack of focus and offers handy hints on how to get it back.

What else are you doing as you read this? Eating your sandwiches? Fielding phone calls? Peeking at emails? Keeping up with your CPD by podcast? Half an eye on that report?  And that’s just at lunch time!

As an accountant, you are almost certainly expected to be, have claimed to be, or aspire to be an ace multi-tasker. You may even believe, mistakenly, that you are one. Now you’re shrugging and proclaiming ‘it’s just the job’. Really? Are these the same accountants who tell me they’re dying of trivia overload? Shouldn’t the job be effective action to meet core goals in business and life?

Multi-tasking as a time optimisation tool is a big, big 21st century delusion. When you jam all that stuff into your poor overloaded brain, are you being effective or merely efficient? Or in the words of time leverage expert, Tim Ferriss, as a multi-tasker, you’re simply ‘doing more, to feel productive, while actually accomplishing less’.

‘To do two things at once is to do neither’ - Publilius Syrus
Studies have proved time and time again, that you can’t simultaneously execute two independent tasks that require conscious thought (breathing, by the way, is unconscious). You can however, shift focus. However, shifting from one task to another erodes our effectiveness. Scientists have watched the brain struggle to do this via MRI scanning. The loss of power might be inconsequential if your tasks are undemanding, like talking to a colleague while making the coffee, but once you move into the realms of exercising judgement, problem solving, creativity and ideas, then the shift is much more damaging and dangerous. (For example, think of mobile phones and drivers – it’s all very 20th century).

Can it get any worse?
Oh yes. Although widely viewed as the norm in workplaces, multi-tasking has been shown to reduce productivity as well as IQ. It seems efficient in the short-term but is seldom so in the longer term with its adverse effects on how people learn and retain information. We’re increasingly experiencing a phenomenon termed ‘continuous partial attention’, which is a result of crowding technologies and leads to superficial understanding, to boredom and to impatience.

Researcher David Meyer (University of Michigan) links multitasking to the release of stress hormones and adrenaline and so to loss of short-term memory and potential long-term illness. In other words, it means humans are just not wired for multi-tasking.

Enter new kid on the block
The new, 21st century way is single-tasking, in which effectiveness is valued above busy-ness and time is used more profitably by stressing attentiveness and mindfulness. Here’s how:

• Go (proactively) with the flow. Technology won’t disappear. Agrarian society changed with the industrial revolution - our post-industrial lives must change likewise. Re-engineer your job and evolve into the 21st century.
• Make it easy on yourself. Adopt a strategy of proactive protectionism. We all know how easy it is to be enticed by the ping of email or text or even the brrrrr of the phone. Adopt ‘batching’ – fixed slots of time when you deal with similar tasks together. In between times, switch off the devices so they can’t impact on your conscious flow.
• So you can’t match Pavlova in Swan Lake, but does a colleague or friend display intelligent single focus? Emulate them - and don’t assume you can’t learn from youngsters. It’s all about modelling behaviour – right at the heart of Neuro Linguistic Programming – a rich treasure trove of techniques to support the evolution of the 21st century workplace.
• Discover what psychologists call flow. Also known as being ‘in the zone’, flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what they are doing, driven by energized focus. An extremely productive state, you’re at your most creative, sharpest, problem solving best and producing your highest performance.

1. How? Set yourself a clear objective and timescale (say 30-60 minutes); balance your ability level with the degree of challenge, so it’s a stretch but not a strain; employ a high degree of mindful concentration and limit your field of attention.
2. Be warned, flow’s greatest foe is interruption, so bag those blocks of protected time.

• Learn about mindfulness.Mindfulness is the act of consciously paying attention, in the present, on purpose and non-judgmentally. The opposite of being on ‘automatic pilot’’, mindfulness is efficient, reduces repetition and aids retention and understanding. Plus the ability to notice what is going on, as it arises, also fosters flexibility in stressful situations.

1. How? Sit in front of a clock and watch the passing of one minute. Focus your entire attention on your breathing, and nothing else, for the full minute. Practise daily to build that mindful muscle so you can flex it at work.
2. ‘I‘m all yours’: How rare, how novel, to have the full attention of another person. Try it at home and at work – you will be rewarded.

Multi-tasking is so last century; improve your game by nurturing intelligent, focused attention rather than task switching. If you need any further persuasion, here’s Lord Chesterfield, writing on ‘singular focus’ the 1740s: “This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure a mark of superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind”. Enough said.

Carol McLachlan FCA
theaccountantscoach.com
Email: [email protected]