Productive Focus – TPW432

Our ability to purposefully focus on what matters to us plays a key role in creating a more productive and meaningful life.

Strengthening our "focus muscle" can help us prioritize what is most important so we have time for what really matters

In a recent social media post, Mike Vardy, founder of The Productivityist and host of the A Productive Conversation podcast said: “Time management is a misguided concept. It’s not about managing time but about managing what you can command, like your tasks. Don’t waste your time trying to manage the uncontrollable.”  

When I read that I thought it was a profoundly wise observation. Although we talk about time management as an element of productivity, time can’t really be “managed”; it simply is. We all have the same amount of time in each day, and nothing we can do will change it.

What we can manage is our use of time. We can manage our energy and we can manage our attention, and by doing so we can make the best use of the time available to us. 

Of course, this isn’t to say that it’s easy to do this. In particular, managing our attention--our focus--both in the moment and in the big picture seems to be a challenge for a lot of us. Mike’s comment and some conversations I’ve had recently inspired me to look at the subject of managing and maintaining our focus.

What does it mean to focus?

Definitions: 

Oxford Language: noun - “the center of interest or activity” and “the state or quality of having or producing clear visual definition”; verb - “pay particular attention to” 

Merriam-Webster: noun - “a center of activity, attraction, or attention” or “directed attention” (I like this, because it implies our ability to control it, to direct it) or “a state or condition permitting clear perception or understanding”; verb - “to concentrate attention or effort” 

In terms of our discussions about productivity, focus means the ability to direct our attention and energy at any given time toward a particular task or topic or person--toward whatever we want to accomplish at the time.

Why does it matter?

As author David Levitin has written in his fascinating book The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, “Attention is the most essential mental resource for any organism.” 

The inability to focus and pay attention inhibits our ability to accomplish what matters to us and make the contributions we want to--to show up in the world the way we want to. When we succumb to distractions, we don’t get things done--or at least not the things we need or want to do. 

Cal Newport, in Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, talks about a state of distraction-free concentration that uses all our brain power to focus on a single task a...