As you strive to gain focus, there are three modes you can fall into in your work. In order to work effectively, you must broaden your focus enough to allow you to see potential connections, but not so much that everything seems random and you are unable to gain traction.
DRIFTERS
A Drifter is someone who does whatever work they feel like from moment to moment. In this mode, a creative floats from objective to objective and task to task without really thinking about how any of them connect. You might be answering e-mails one minute, writing a few words on a proposal the next, and then making a phone call or two. Your work is fragmented. While you might get things done, there’s no overarching sense of purpose behind how you approach your work, and you don’t really have a prescribed plan for how you will get things done.
To the Drifter, finishing a project feels a lot like pushing a wall forward because you have no priorities—your efforts and attention are spread thin across everything you need to do. You waste effort on task switching and may have a difficult time deciding what to do next. This is not say that you’re not productive; Drifters can accomplish quite a lot. But your approach is so scattershot that you aren’t able to leverage critical opportunities. While no one wants to think of themselves this way, many of us stumble into Drifter behavior from time to time.
DRIVERS
This is when you become very focused on outcomes. From the moment you receive an objective, you map out a workflow, break the larger goal into tasks and subtasks, and structure your work schedule in order to get it done as efficiently as possible. You become driven by checking tasks off lists and probably carry tons of data around just in case it will come in handy.
Drivers have a very strong sense of what they’re trying to do, and they typically follow a prescribed system for accomplishing their work. But in their effort to drive to the end objective, they often overlook or discount opportunities. Drivers have a narrow-focus horizon. They are too microscopically focused on the objective (as they saw it from the beginning) and are often reluctant to redirect their energy when new opportunities emerge in the course of their work. They’re simply too busy trying to get through the project to respond to new insights that—they fear—could lure them off track.
DEVELOPERS
Developers have a strong sense of the overall objective and have a sense of purpose and priorities in navigating there, but instead of just plowing through the work with their noses down, they purposefully approach each task or element of a project as an opportunity to develop new connections or potential ideas.
Developers are world makers. They are able to take a lot of disparate-seeming elements in their work and weave them together into something useful because they are not too hyperfocused to recognize the patterns around them. They have cultivated the skills necessary to focus intensely for a period of time, then release their focus in order to assess the lay of the land. This allows them to iterate rapidly and quickly redirect their efforts. They also treat their work activities like investments. They are trying to maximize return rather than simply get through the work as efficiently as possible.
The more you can cultivate a Developer mind-set, the more likely you are to experience unexpected creative insights that move a project forward. Developers lock in on the heart of the problem quickly (define), establish their game plan and center their activities around their most crucial priorities (refine), and organize their work so that they’re minimizing distractions and staying on course (cluster). However, unlike the Driver, they are able to occasionally take a few steps back and redirect their efforts as needed rather than simply following their predefined plan.
* Source: The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry