In today's hectic world, with more distractions competing for your attention than ever before, how can you stay focused? How can you get and keep other people's attention? On today's episode of The Forward Thinking Podcast, FCCS Chief Learning Officer Jean Cantey Segal interviews focus expert Curt Steinhorst to discuss harnessing the power of human attention. Your attention is the most valuable resource that you have, and Curt understands the need for increased focus in today's world. He shares the importance of creating a focused environment for yourself and your team, provides doable actions to improve personal attention and reduce stress levels, and offers ways to focus on company culture at an organizational level at a time when the value of people is more important than ever before.
Today's Insights Include:
The challenge of focusing at work
- Focus and attention is a systemic challenge in the workplace, yet no one is talking about it.
- Employees are overwhelmed with emails, meetings, and constant interruptions with unrealistic expectations for a prompt response.
- Humans are not wired to be in the situation of information overload and constant interruptions.
- Attention is the most important resource that you have, and it is in your control.
Steps to cultivate greater focus
- Leaders set the standards — address the issues directly.
- Limit meetings — scheduling excessive meetings keeps people from getting their work done.
- Identify how information is being shared digitally across the company.
- Company culture can be maintained without increasing digital communication — your employees are not connecting as a group in a meeting that no one is paying attention to.
- Asynchronous videos and one-on-one connections are more effective than another group meeting.
- Create focused work environments that provide what people need to create a collaborative work culture.
The great importance of focus in 2020
- The challenges of 2020 have brought a greater need for focus and connection than ever before.
- Isolation is becoming even more dangerous and has to be combated with meaningful connections.
- Attention is limited and your brain does not differentiate between the attention you give to world news and your work.
- Leaders need to identify ways to alleviate stress and lighten the burdens of others.
- Double down on efforts to increase feelings of community, stability and value.
- Flexibility is essential to successfully navigating constant change.
- Value people first by emphasizing humanity in all interactions.
Tools to enhance focus
- Look at your space — your attention is driven by what you see so adjust your web browser to only reflect the task at hand.
- Match the time to the task so that your brain can work on what matters most first.
- Create focused routines to eliminate how many active decisions you need to make.
- Increase movement when you are feeling stuck or distracted.
- Mind the gaps — do not fill up every moment of your day.
- Create a transition that mimics a commute at the beginning and end of every day.
This podcast is powered by FCCS.
Resources
Curt Steinhorst
Focuswise
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