Posts Tagged ‘focus’

Sometimes I think organizing is all about getting rid of the noise.  Visual noise distract and pull our focus just like auditory noise. Noise is just another form of clutter really…Looking around your office, what looks noisy? What doesn’t belong? What is pulling focus? If you don’t love it, it isn’t making you money and isn’t useful it can probably go. Keep clearing a little at a time until you hit the right note.

The Yahoo! Search Team (Photo by Yahoo Anecdotal)

How do you organize a team? Or stay organized yourself within a team? Everyone has such different styles and modes of communication. Keeping on track and productive can be an organizational tangle. There are a lot of tools today that are supposed to help…email, file-sharing, prayer circles…but do they actually work or add to workload by virtue of the amount of information to keep track of?

I think it depends on the leadership. When the leadership is clear on goals and shares information with the team,  everyone understands the key pieces of the puzzle/initiative at hand. Then people can act with authority within their own sphere…using the tools at their disposal creatively and productively.  Inspired, directed leaders =  focused, organized team.

Slowing down

Ok … so let’s pretend we agree that slowing down and focusing in on one task at a time is the right way to go. What if we took it even further and said that no-tasking is the way to go?  What would that look like? I think it would look like you having fun at your job, fun running your business and bottom line  feeling much less overwhelmed.

I’m not so excited by the “shoulds” and the “have tos” as I am by the “get-tos” and the “love-tos.”  I wonder if we would be way  more organized if we stopped trying to get it all done and focused in on the things we love to do.  It may sound impossible (who’s going to pick up the laundry?, etc) but there are services for so many things:

Image by 416style via Flickr

laundry for example, food delivery, dog-walking (we love to do that though).

Outsourcing and delegating are great ways to embark on your no-tasking adventure. If you have to do something you don’t love, back against the wall, wall on fire…there is always the option of going into the fire. Really focusing in on what it is you are doing until you see the fun in it.

The research is in…

best way to get what you want done is focusing in on one thing at a time. It may sound like a crazy suggestion if you have 50 things on your to-do list or task list but you really can only do one thing a time. That is, if you want to avoid crashing into the car in front of you.

Isn't this fun when you focus? Image via Wikipedia

The professional organizer in me says, “make a list of 5 things you have to do today and focus on each one until they are done.” The human being in me knows this is often not going to happen. In light of this reality – whatever you are doing – attempt to give it your full attention as an experiment.

Just for a day.

See for yourself if this works better for you, if you are less stressed, if you are excited about what you are doing.  It is the zen thing – the example being that even brushing your teeth is a fulfilling activity if you do it right, that is, with attention.  I’ll go into this more tomorrow but the best case scenario is to have no tasks – that is – you love what you are doing so much you have a “get to do” list. Ohm.