Tag: focus

Magpies

Posted on by philipdodson

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There are things in life that we do, yet do we stop to actually think is there any value to it. Do we ask ourselves ‘what was the point of that?’.

Day-in, day-out our time is consumed with ‘doing’, we are busy.

That Facebook survey to tell us ‘who our best friend forever is’ or some repetitive work task that’s done because ‘that’s how we do things here’.

How much of our lives are we sucked into things, especially in a digital world, where we end up spending time on an activity that adds no value at all. It also creates a habit of being distracted by the next thing that comes along, so when we need to focus, we’ve lost the skill to.

Just because it’s there and we can do something does not mean that we should be doing it.

Our lives are precious, guard your time for deeper and meaningful things that make a difference. Don’t do ‘that’ and become a ‘magpie’ taken by the next shiny thing.

The multi-task myth

Posted on by philipdodson

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Among the many myths of the industrialised world, the ‘multi-task’ myth is one of the biggest.

We are sold and told that the ability to do several things all at the same time is some magical skill that we must aspire to.

It’s all part of the ‘hustle’ and macho bullshit that we are somehow a ‘killer’ business person if we are juggling several tasks all at once.

It is all part of the mainly shallow, dull and repetitive work that most do as cogs in someone else’s machine.

The best work comes from a deep focus on one task at a time, where we shut off the ‘multi-tasking’ also known as email consumption, social media ‘dicking about’ and instant gratification. In fact, it is just an addiction to doing ‘stuff’ regardless of it’s value to our lives.

The more we can create long periods of time shut away from distractions and multiple low-value tasks, the more we can condition our brains to do deeper, better work.

‘Single-task’ the most important thing first every day and focus on that only.