YOU WILL BECOME

              

(picture credit. hbr.org)

                          ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION!!!

Attention is the basic and essential capital you can possess as business owner and an employee and trust me, as simple and mundane as it might sound? It’s not easy to place your attention on a particular thing at a time especially when you have a lot to handle before the day runs out. I mean, I have been there before, I will start a project and leave it half way just to scroll my Instagram feeds, watch a movie or read a book. A project that should take a day or two to finish will take me weeks. Don’t judge me, I have changed.  Attention management is an art; you have to be deliberate in practicing it. Well, what is attention management?  It is the practice of controlling distractions, being present in the moment and maximizing focus so you can unleash your genius. See? You have to control distractions in order to maximize focus.  Let’s look at a few ways we can control distractions.

·         PRIORITIZE: yes, there is a lot of work to do but not all are urgent. Here is a suggestion, before the day starts make a list of all you have to do that day, pick the work that needs immediate attention (to be submitted before the end of that day or the next day), then the ones that are urgent but not so urgent (if you know what I mean) then the ones that you can take your time to work on. So you start with the most urgent for that day, then the urgent and not so urgent. It will help you keep your head together.

·         CONTROL YOUR ENVIRONMENT: your environment contributes to your productivity, either it accelerates your efforts/ thinking, or slows it down.   If you are easily distracted like me, we can’t survive in a noisy place, there is no way we can think straight when the environment is too busy. So here is what I do, I am a night crawler so I rather do my work while others sleep. If you are not, be a cat, you can excuse yourself from the noise and remove every form of distraction, I mean it, do away with it, else it’s going to slow you down. But if you work in an office you are safe because no one will play loud music or talk on a loud tone, it’s been controlled for you.

·         BE INTENTIONAL ON WHAT YOU ATTEND TO: you might think that after prioritizing and controlling your environment, you are safe. Lol No, the obstacles we are fighting are serious minded, well so are we. You have to be deliberate, if you have selected the most urgent of tasks to work on, stick to it, don’t go about checking emails and buddies on whatsApp  and other places, trust me it will get so interesting you will not want to leave. Do one thing at a time to maximize your focus and productivity, you have to be intentional and proactive instead of reactive, you can’t afford to avoid sleep because you have to meet a deadline. As James Williams will put it “ My experience is what I agree to attend to” your attention is essential and you need to harness it in order to achieve productivity.

Let’s go ahead and make this week productive