Time Management Expert, Event Speaker: Mark Lamendola
 

Time Tips: Manage Your Attention Span Tip #2

We are often victims of our own attention span limitations--and those of others. In today's increasingly wired world, attention spans are shrinking. Tasks, information, and schedules are increasingly fragmented.

Thirty years ago, it would not be unusual for a person to sit and read 100 pages or so in a book without pausing. Today, that's highly unusual--because attention spans are shrinking.

This is observable in the work setting. As people progress with a task, their attention begins to waver and then they lose focus altogether. This is why when you walk around the typical office you will see people aimlessly staring at screens. Or, you can watch a person begin a task and then noticeably slow down only minutes later.

You can fight the good fight and try to maintain longer attention spans as you work. But, that's an uphill battle. I'm not saying it can't be done--I am saying it's hard to do. And, it doesn't solve your immediate need to work more efficiently.

You must accommodate your current attention span, whatever length it may be. If you know you can properly focus on your tasks for only 10 minutes before you begin to slow down or feel distractions, then limit your time for each of your most critical tasks to no more than 10 minutes each.

What if you want to expand your attention span? Doing so is much like weight training. You will have to begin by using a weight you can safely lift. Then, increase the weight as you adapt to it.

For example, let's say you can focus for roughly 10 minutes before your mind begins to wander. So, you work in 10 minute blocks to accommodate that. Get a digital timer that provides an audible alert, and set it for 12 minutes. Start a new task, and refuse to budge from it until your timer indicates the 12 minutes are up. After doing this religiously for about three weeks, you will find your attention span has increased to 12 minutes. If you could actually look at your cerebral cortex "before" and "after," you would be able to see changes to the wiring--your synaptic connections would have actually changed. Set your timer for 15 minutes, and raise the bar again.

As you do this training, you will find your efficiency drops every time you begin with the longer time spans. But, because you can work at increasingly longer stretches, you lower the "transaction costs" of switching between tasks. If your work is such that you don't actually need to do frequent switching between tasks, your overall efficiency goes up. If, however, your work is such that you must frequently switch between tasks, then your overall efficiency goes down.

The key here is to determine the length of attention span that best matches what you need to accomplish. Correctly match things up, and you will be able to make all of your waking hours (or minutes) truly count.
 
A great way many businesses are managing time is using software. There are many forms of time and attendance software which allows managers to track and monitor employees time usage.
 

More thoughts on time management

The phrase "time management" is an unfortunate language quirk. You can't really manage time. It just is. You can't gain time, create time, or even lose time. Time is what it is, regardless of what we do.

It would be better to say "time allocation" or "activity management" "time usage" or some other phraseology to indicate that it's not time itself you're managing but how you use the time that exists. But we'll use the common terminology here to avoid confusion.

Some things time management is not:

  • Being more efficient. Suppose you become very efficient at making buggy whips. Does this fact mean you are managing your time well?
  • Getting more done in a given amount of time. Getting more done of what? And to what degree of quality? If you rake the leaves on a lawn from one side to the other all day long, does that mean you are a good time manager?
  • Being able to juggle multiple priorities. Instead of juggling priorities, assign priorities. First tend to the urgent things, then the most important things.
  • Mastering multi-tasking. This concept conflicts with what we know about the human brain. If you buy into this self-defeating, time-wasting, quality-killing ideology, you might also be interested in practicing solo flight by flapping your arms frantically.
  • Working faster. No, this mode is how you make mistakes that you subsequently have to spend more time fixing.

Some things good time management involves:

  • Deciding what to do. This is trickier than it sounds. Which is why there are time management experts.
  • Deciding what not to do. This is even trickier than deciding what to do. Which is why there are time managers and why discipline is a huge, huge factor in accomplishing this.
  • Deciding what to do when, and in what order. In essence, prioritization.
  • Determining the scope, goals, and metrics for each activity you undertake. In this area, we the find most room for improvement. Precision here allows you to avoid waste on the one hand, and falling short on the other.
  • Planning out the work, task, project, or activity such that you determine the necessary steps to quality completion. That is, what must you do to meet the intended goal and quality metrics?
  • Identifying unnecessary steps. Get this right, and you can cut your wasted hours significantly.
  • Figuring out what resources to use. Not all resources applicable to a task are equal. Picking the right tool for the job saves time, improves quality, and makes life less stressful.

We've highlighted only some of the factors involved in good time management. We actually teach extreme time management, which is a methodology that allows you to make effective use of your time almost second nature. You don't need a complicated system. Our system puts many of the variables on autopilot, so you have more time to do what you need to do. Our system goes way beyond most other systems in results, yet is far simpler.

Contact us for a presentation to your organization: comments @ mindconnection.com (remove the spaces after pasting into your e-mail client's "to" box.