Attention Residue

What you will learn: 

- The importance of attention and focus

- How to protect yourself from distraction, overwhelm and stress.

- Attention Residue and it’s ability to dramatically increase productivity

It seems as if we are constantly inundated with an overwhelming list of tasks to complete.

It's as if the more technology that comes out with the promise of making our lives easier, it works in reverse, and our lives become more stressed.

With the increase of technological tools, the expectation of what we can do increases. Eventually, we become handcuffed to the technology and start to develop a dependency on our devices to meet the increased demands of our lives.

I often hear from clients that it feels as if they're never getting ahead and are constantly in catch-up mode. 

It feels as if the work they do is never enough or there is not enough time.

The never-enoughness crushes self-esteem and motivation, leaving them exhausted, overwhelmed, and anxious.

It’s no wonder the American Psychological Association (APA) Stress in America Survey found that 84% of adults reported experiencing at least one emotion associated with prolonged stress, such as feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or angry.

Now, I don't want to bash technology, it's here to stay, and we need to learn how to make it work for us. 

One of the main negative aspects of technology is its dramatic control of our attention and ability to focus on one task.

Because information is so easily obtained, we have been conditioned to distract ourselves when we feel uncomfortable due to natural mental struggle, boredom, or confusion. 

 We constantly switch from task to task, and our attention is divided, leaving us exhausted and highly unproductive. (have you ever finished a workday and felt as if you barely got anything substantial done)

It's a double negative, as we 

A) Cannot produce our best work

B) We don't feel proud of the work we DO complete.

Leading us to:

C) Feeling like we're not doing enough and diving us back into more attention switching, which repeats the same cycle.  

How do we break free of the cycle?

FOCUS ON ONE TASK at a time // Mono tasking.

Multi-tasking is a myth. It’s impossible to be focusing on two things at once. When we try to do this, our brain ping pongs between both tasks at hyper speed, draining our precious focus resources.

This concept is called  Attention Residue.

The term was popularized by Sophie Leroy, an assistant professor at the University of Washington. I like to describe attention residue with this example.

Imagine sitting down at your desk in the morning to work with a full tank of attention (100).

You open up your computer and start working on your first project with 100% of that attention, then suddenly, “bing” your phone lights up with an e-mail notification.

You grab the phone, open it up, read the e-mail, and then return to the project.

When you grab the phone and open it up, you switch your attention towards it, and then you bring that back to the project, but there is still some “attention residue” on that e-mail. Let’s call it 5%. Now you’re back at the original project with 95%. 

Ten minutes later your co-worker comes in and asks you about your weekend. You don’t want to be rude, so you chat for a few minutes (another 5%). 

Let’s say you don’t have any more external distractions, but your project starts to become difficult, and you’re naturally losing focus, so you “give yourself a break” and look at the upcoming baseball games this weekend (5%).

If you extrapolate this over an entire day or morning, depending on how well you manage your attention, you could be in the red reasonably quickly.

Now you need to reach for external energy sources or motivation in the afternoon as you're slamming down the proverbial gas pedal just trying to keep up.

The simple way to work on this is by going 100% in on whatever you’re doing and having solid boundaries with your attention.

When you need to focus, set up your environment to be a distraction-free zone. 

Keep the phone away, block apps (I like to use Self Control), communicate with your team that you can only be reached for emergencies, etc.

Our attention is the MOST valuable commodity this century.

Giant tech companies make billions off your attention, and they have some of the most intelligent minds in the world working on how to keep you hooked.

Being able to focus on what is most important to you will be THE superpower of this century.

If you want more custom support increasing your focus, overcoming distractions, gaining clarity, and developing internal motivation, please reach out for 1:1 coaching. I would love to connect with you.