Return On Minute

By now we all know the detriment of muti-tasking.  Sophie Leroy, a psychologist, came up with the idea of attention residue.  She found that when you switch tasks your attention doesn’t immediately follow – rather it is divided for some period of time a.k.a. attention residue. I imagine this like Ghostbusters goo when they get hit by a spirit. And much like that goo, the more residue the worse you can perform the next task. Even small distractions (such as a quick glance at email) leave residue.

However, an environment of busyness is not the solution either; it causes stress, cultural toxicity, and employee burnout. According to a study by Scientific American Mind, behavioral researchers found that people lose about 13 IQ points when they’re in a sustained state of hecticness, called “tunneling.”

Counter intuitive to the “do it till you drop” attitude of the past is an alternative approach of deep focus that can help you be more productive and feel better at the end of the day.

The Advent of Focus Fridays

One of the few positives coming out of the pandemic was the recognition of employee burnout by top leadership.  At the time, I was a Chief of Staff and while I would love to take credit, one of my colleagues told me about a program they instituted in their team called Focus Fridays which gave everyone a full day of no meetings. But more than that, it empowered people to say “no” to meetings. Led by the top management, it was a forced break in the workweek much like half time in a soccer game.

3 Strategies to create focus

So, what can you do to institute a similar culture in your workplace? There’s no easy answer, but here are a few strategies that might help:

Start with what you can control

If you’re not a leader in your organization, you can still create the environment for focus. Block your calendar for 90 minutes of focused time not including any prep time at least once a week.

If you’re working remotely or hybrid, create the physical environment in your work-space where you can remove all (or most) distractions. If you’re back to a full-time office environment, shut your door, put on headphones with a Do Not Disturb sign.  Make it clear and obvious to those around you that you are working “in the zone.”

Do this regularly and people will begin to notice and respect your space. You will also be modeling behavior that others can follow and perhaps create a grassroots focus movement.

Walk it out

Did you know that Velcro was invented by a guy who was taking his dog for a walk? Many experiments have shown that after or during exercise, even very mild exertion, people perform better on tests of memory, creativity, and attention.

Because we don’t have to devote much conscious effort to the act of walking, our attention is free to wander, and our mind is free to rejuvenate especially if the walk is out in nature.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

-Mark Twain

Celebrate Focus

To correct that “always-on” misperception, talk to your colleagues not about how busy you are, but how much better you feel by how focused you are.

If you’re a leader, model the behavior and ask your managers to do the same.  Have them talk more openly with their team about what they can do to create more focus for their people, be that minimizing flurries of urgent emails or Slack/Teams messages, or creating team norms around quite hours, or maybe even incentivizing boundary setting like this one tech company recently did.

If you have a global team, remember to respect the focus hours of everyone on the team even if they are not the same as your own.

Bottom Line

By creating a culture of focus be it just for yourself or for your team or for your organization, you’re creating a culture of respect and trust that can lead not only to greater Return on Minute but also to greater well-being and happiness.