If you want to thrive in the create-on-demand world, you must develop the capacity to focus deeply. Though broad and shallow engagement may feel necessary because of the number of priorities on your plate, to be truly effective you must cultivate the ability to do quick, focused dives into the depths of a project and emerge with useful ideas. More important, this must be done in spite of the increasing pressure to do things faster, better, and cheaper.
Because we tend to gravitate toward possibilities, many creative people wrestle with focus. We can quickly become fascinated with new ideas or bounce from unsolved problem to unsolved problem without really solving any of them.
This “priority ping-pong” prevents us from engaging in the kind of deeply focused thinking that facilitates insight and moves the needle on our projects. As the number of unresolved creative problems in our work increases, we can become overwhelmed or generally discouraged by all that’s left undone.
The only solution is to stop living reactively and to instill a new practice for thinking deeply about your work: lock in on the heart of the problem quickly (define), establish your game plan to center your activities around the most crucial priorities (refine), and organize your work so that you’re minimizing distractions and staying on course (cluster). Developing these practices will increase the number and quality of spontaneous insights you experience.
Two key factors, which largely stem from dissonance, affect our capacity to focus: unhealthy assumptions and the “ping.”
UNHEALTHY ASSUMPTIONS
Our minds are excellent at solving problems and forming patterns. It’s the primary reason we’re able to survive past the age of two. We learn from our experiences, and some of those lessons keep us from making mistakes that could significantly harm us, like touching a hot stove or punching someone bigger than us. But this ability to connect the dots can also cause us to adopt false assumptions about cause and effect.
For example, it’s easy to assume that because something has always been done a certain way, that must be the one and only right way to do it. We sometimes develop the assumption that because a system or method brought us success in one instance, it will always do it. Or we may assume that because something didn’t work in one instance, it will never work under any circumstances. Any of these assumptions can, over time, be disastrous to our creative process because they limit how we look at problems.
When you allow false assumptions to creep into your life, you become inflexible, less capable of focusing on the issues at hand. The key to overcoming them is to effectively define the creative problems you’re really trying to solve.
Question: Are there assumptions you’re making about your current projects that are artificially limiting your options? These could be the result of what’s worked or failed in the past, something your manager once said in a meeting, or the way in which you’re trying to avoid the worst-case scenario. Take a few minutes to list assumptions that may have crept in and are causing you to lose traction or do less-than-optimal work.
THE “PING”
Technology is an extension of our capacity to accomplish our will. If we desire to do something, technology can help us to do it cheaper and faster. But not all the things we want are necessarily beneficial to us. We are often willing to sacrifice long-term gain for the sake of a little short-term satisfaction, and for many of us this tendency is seriously affecting our capacity to focus and be present in the moment.
A few years ago I (Todd Henry) noticed a disturbing pattern in my life. It was a tiny sensation, a little pinprick in my gut every so often. I called it the “Ping.” The Ping is that little sensation that occasionally prompts me to check my e-mail or my social media accounts. It’s the impulse to mindlessly surf news sites instead of doing something productive. The Ping wants to be my master. It wants to own me. It wants me to serve it. The Ping even has a life philosophy for me: “Something out there is more important than whatever is right here.”
When we allow the Ping to rule our life, we allow it to rob us. And we don’t even notice it happening because the Ping is robbing us of our focus 10 seconds at a time. Fortunately, the right practices can refine our focus and keep us deeply engaged in our work for longer stretches of time. You don’t need to get rid of technology; you just need to use it in a way that increases your capacity to do what matters to you. You need to set priorities and home in on them rather than living in a state of continuous partial attention. You can’t do your best and most insightful work when you allow the Ping to rule your life.
Question: Where do you find the Ping at work in your life? Do you find it difficult to maintain your focus on what’s in front of you because you’re always scanning the horizon for something more entertaining? List a few ways you think you could mitigate this in your life. Some methods might include occasionally (and strategically) leaving your smartphone at home, logging in to your e-mail only at predefined times, or setting aside specific times for entertainment so that you don’t feel entitled to occasionally zone out in the middle of times when you need to be deeply focused.
* Source: The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry