MULTITASKING VS. ABSOLUTE FOCUS
This is a topic that I touch on a regular basis. But this time I want to take it to the next level. Imagine for a moment, do you multitask out of fear?
Despite what todays hectic society and the frazzled people around you want you to believe, we as humans are not wired for multitasking. Multitasking indeed has its place, but not when it comes to productivity and creativity. Performance wise we are at our peak when we’re focused. When we’re really focused and we’re leveraging our God given skills, talents and creativity in a way that is challenging, It stimulates us to be at our best and eliminates all the ancillary noise. It allows us to recognize our fears and immediately rationalize them. In turn putting them in a manageable “box”.
We all can relate to the feeling of being so into the task at hand that you lose yourself in what you are doing. Your sense of time is diminished or even nonexistent, any sense of nervousness or anxiety completely diminishes and trivial thoughts not related to the task at hand evaporate before we even are fully aware of them. You become who you are naturally. No fear, no unknown feelings of “why”. In that moment in time you create success. That is where the “Genie in the bottle” begins.
So how do you actually get and even more importantly stay focused? What are some practical ways to get this focus, even what some people call “insane focus” in your life?
Here are a few simple points that you can begin implementing today.
The key to focusing and becoming more productive has everything to do with eliminating or at least minimizing distractions. Ask yourself what are your distractions? What keeps you from being focused?
Make A Distractions List… Take a few minutes and write down your major distractions. What are the things that are keeping you distracted in whatever area of life you want to achieve more focus in? What’s distracting you at work? Is it friends or a significant other who calls or texts often during business hours? Is it your email notifications? Is it a client who is unreasonable and is negatively affecting you? Is it your Facebook notifications? Is it a associate that just comes in to your office and sits down? You need to get very clear and honest with yourself about what’s really distracting you.
I’ll bet that once you get your distractions identified, that what you will find is that one of the biggest culprits that sucks the energy out of you and that makes you the jack of all trades and the master of none, is multitasking. You’re attempting to do multiple things at once.
Distractions are the antithesis of focus. When you’re attempting to do several things at once, you are by definition not focused. You are dividing your focus and attention. When you divide or divert your attention you will never perfect the task at hand.
When your attention is scattered and not focused you become much less effective. If you want success in every aspect of your life, you must be focused on it.
“If it is worth your time doing, then make your time worth it.”
Your undivided attention has to be focused on whatever it is you’re doing, if you expect anything worthwhile to come from your efforts. You can’t do that effectively if you’re always trying to multitask. Make no mistake about it, multitasking and the “I’m very busy feeling” that you tell yourself all too often when you have poor time management, is just that, a ridiculous feeling. It’s a productivity dirty bomb that has you fooling yourself.
Being busy is in no way the same as productivity. If you take the time to honestly analyze the perfect transaction from beginning to end you will discover it’s the exact opposite. You didn’t feel “busy” or crazed at all. You most likely were in a rhythm of what makes you who you truly are. You were relaxed. You were singly motivated to accomplish what you wanted and didn’t allow the noise to effect you. You may have appeared busy to the outside world, but on the inside you were actually at ease, to the point that other actually say that you made it look easy. All the moving parts came together because you focused and orchestrated every move.
As I have said time and time again. Multitasking is for those who “need” to feel busy as a sense of accomplishment. They simply do not measure results in the truest sense of the word.
The introduction of the calendar
Yes I know the Egyptians invented it first, but I want to believe I am perfecting the use of it.
Establish set times where you tackle a specific task. Repeat those times on a consistent basis.
Focus your full attention only on the task that you set for yourself during that time. Your calls can go to voice mail. The emails can wait. Your Facebook can wait. Then let the people around you know that you will be unavailable during those times.
When you schedule time for everything you have to do during the week in order to achieve your goals, you will become focused, what you’re going to discover is that you have more time then you used to have. You are no longer so “busy” that your time management is no longer an issue. You are working your calendar and time is not working you.
As you develop a discipline of working your calendar you will also find that you’re really preventing yourself from unconsciously multitasking. You’ll be getting things done in a more timely and effective way. Your energy will be supercharged and you will be on top of your game. People will take notice and before you know it they will follow your lead. Then you have achieved the ultimate goal. A culture in all aspects of your life that follows you around.
One without noise, negativity and best of all, without fear.
Posted on July 27, 2015The Three C’s to succeed.
A little over a year ago I read this commencement given by Admiral William H. McRaven for the first time. I have read it at the end of every month since then.
Within it, I hope you will find, as I did, what are the three C’s of success.
Consistency, Commitment, Confidence that you will succeed.
William H. McRaven is an admiral, former commander of the Navy’s SEAL Team 3 and current commander of the US Special Operations Command — the man who led the mission to get Osama bin Laden. On May 17, 2014 he gave the commencement address for his alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, which touched graduates with its earnest, simple advice about living a better life. This Memorial Day, an excerpt:
If you will humor this old sailor for just a moment, I have a few suggestions that may help you on your way to a better world.
And while these lessons were learned during my time in the military, I can assure you that it matters not whether you ever served a day in uniform.
It matters not your gender, your ethnic or religious background, your orientation, or your social status.
Our struggles in this world are similar and the lessons to overcome those struggles and to move forward — changing ourselves and the world around us — will apply equally to all.
I have been a Navy SEAL for 36 years. But it all began when I left UT for basic SEAL training in Coronado, Calif.
Basic SEAL training is six months of long, torturous runs in the soft sand, midnight swims in the cold water off San Diego, obstacles courses, unending calisthenics, days without sleep and always being cold, wet and miserable.
It is six months of being constantly harassed by professionally trained warriors who seek to find the weak of mind and body and eliminate them from ever becoming a Navy SEAL.
But, the training also seeks to find those students who can lead in an environment of constant stress, chaos, failure and hardships.
To me, basic SEAL training was a lifetime of challenges crammed into six months.
So, here are the 10 lessons I learned from basic SEAL training that hopefully will be of value to you as you move forward in life:
Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room, and the first thing they would inspect was your bed.
If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack — rack, that’s Navy talk for bed.
It was a simple task — mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that we were aspiring to be real warriors, tough, battle-hardened SEALs — but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.
If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another.
By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter.
If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.
And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made — that you made — and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.
If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed…
During SEAL training, the students are broken down into boat crews. Each crew is seven students — three on each side of a small rubber boat and one coxswain to help guide the dingy.
Every day your boat crew forms up on the beach and is instructed to get through the surf zone and paddle several miles down the coast.
In the winter, the surf off San Diego can get to be 8 to 10 feet high and it is exceedingly difficult to paddle through the plunging surf unless everyone digs in.
Every paddle must be synchronized to the stroke count of the coxswain. Everyone must exert equal effort or the boat will turn against the wave and be unceremoniously tossed back on the beach.
For the boat to make it to its destination, everyone must paddle.
You can’t change the world alone — you will need some help — and to truly get from your starting point to your destination takes friends, colleagues, the good will of strangers and a strong coxswain to guide them.
If you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle…
Over a few weeks of difficult training, my SEAL class, which started with 150 men, was down to just 42. There were now six boat crews of seven men each.
I was in the boat with the tall guys, but the best boat crew we had was made up of the little guys — the munchkin crew, we called them — no one was over about 5-foot-5.
The munchkin boat crew had one American Indian, one African-American, one Polish-American, one Greek-American, one Italian-American, and two tough kids from the Midwest. They out-paddled, outran and out-swam all the other boat crews.
The big men in the other boat crews would always make good-natured fun of the tiny little flippers the munchkins put on their tiny little feet prior to every swim.
But somehow these little guys, from every corner of the nation and the world, always had the last laugh — swimming faster than everyone and reaching the shore long before the rest of us.
SEAL training was a great equalizer. Nothing mattered but your will to succeed. Not your color, not your ethnic background, not your education and not your social status.
Several times a week, the instructors would line up the class and do a uniform inspection. It was exceptionally thorough.
Your hat had to be perfectly starched, your uniform immaculately pressed and your belt buckle shiny and void of any smudges.
But it seemed that no matter how much effort you put into starching your hat, or pressing your uniform or polishing your belt buckle — it just wasn’t good enough.
The instructors would find “something” wrong.
For failing the uniform inspection, the student had to run, fully clothed into the surf zone and then, wet from head to toe, roll around on the beach until every part of your body was covered with sand.
The effect was known as a “sugar cookie.” You stayed in that uniform the rest of the day — cold, wet and sandy.
There were many a student who just couldn’t accept the fact that all their effort was in vain. That no matter how hard they tried to get the uniform right — it was unappreciated.
Those students didn’t make it through training.
Those students didn’t understand the purpose of the drill. You were never going to succeed. You were never going to have a perfect uniform.
Sometimes no matter how well you prepare or how well you perform, you still end up as a sugar cookie.
It’s just the way life is sometimes.
If you want to change the world, get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward…
Every day during training, you were challenged with multiple physical events — long runs, long swims, obstacle courses, hours of calisthenics — something designed to test your mettle.
Every event had standards — times you had to meet. If you failed to meet those standards, your name was posted on a list and at the end of the day those on the list were invited to — a “circus.”
A circus was two hours of additional calisthenics — designed to wear you down, to break your spirit, to force you to quit.
No one wanted a circus.
A circus meant that for that day, you didn’t measure up. A circus meant more fatigue — and more fatigue meant that the following day would be more difficult — and more circuses were likely.
But at some time during SEAL training, everyone — everyone — made the circus list.
But an interesting thing happened to those who were constantly on the list. Over time those students — who did two hours of extra calisthenics — got stronger and stronger.
The pain of the circuses built inner strength — built physical resiliency.
Life is filled with circuses.
You will fail. You will likely fail often. It will be painful. It will be discouraging. At times it will test you to your very core.
But if you want to change the world, don’t be afraid of the circuses…
At least twice a week, the trainees were required to run the obstacle course. The obstacle course contained 25 obstacles including a 10-foot-high wall, a 30-foot cargo net and a barbed-wire crawl, to name a few.
But the most challenging obstacle was the slide for life. It had a three-level, 30-foot tower at one end and a one-level tower at the other. In between was a 200-foot-long rope.
You had to climb the three-tiered tower and once at the top, you grabbed the rope, swung underneath the rope and pulled yourself hand over hand until you got to the other end.
The record for the obstacle course had stood for years when my class began training in 1977.
The record seemed unbeatable until one day a student decided to go down the slide for life — head-first.
Instead of swinging his body underneath the rope and inching his way down, he bravely mounted the TOP of the rope and thrust himself forward.
It was a dangerous move — seemingly foolish and fraught with risk. Failure could mean injury and being dropped from the training.
Without hesitation, the student slid down the rope — perilously fast. Instead of several minutes, it only took him half that time, and by the end of the course he had broken the record.
If you want to change the world, sometimes you have to slide down the obstacle head-first…
During the land-warfare phase of training, the students are flown out to San Clemente Island, which lies off the coast of San Diego.
The waters off San Clemente are a breeding ground for the great white sharks.
To pass SEAL training, there are a series of long swims that must be completed. One is the night swim.
Before the swim, the instructors joyfully brief the trainees on all the species of sharks that inhabit the waters off San Clemente.
They assure you, however, that no student has ever been eaten by a shark — at least not recently.
But, you are also taught that if a shark begins to circle your position — stand your ground. Do not swim away. Do not act afraid.
And if the shark, hungry for a midnight snack, darts towards you — then summon up all your strength and punch him in the snout and he will turn and swim away.
There are a lot of sharks in the world. If you hope to complete the swim, you will have to deal with them.
So, if you want to change the world, don’t back down from the sharks…
As Navy SEALs, one of our jobs is to conduct underwater attacks against enemy shipping. We practiced this technique extensively during basic training.
The ship-attack mission is where a pair of SEAL divers is dropped off outside an enemy harbor and then swims well over two miles — underwater — using nothing but a depth gauge and a compass to get to their target.
During the entire swim, even well below the surface there is some light that comes through. It is comforting to know that there is open water above you.
But as you approach the ship, which is tied to a pier, the light begins to fade. The steel structure of the ship blocks the moonlight — it blocks the surrounding street lamps — it blocks all ambient light.
To be successful in your mission, you have to swim under the ship and find the keel — the centerline and the deepest part of the ship.
This is your objective. But the keel is also the darkest part of the ship — where you cannot see your hand in front of your face, where the noise from the ship’s machinery is deafening and where it is easy to get disoriented and fail.
Every SEAL knows that under the keel, at the darkest moment of the mission, is the time when you must be calm, composed — when all your tactical skills, your physical power and all your inner strength must be brought to bear.
If you want to change the world, you must be your very best in the darkest moment…
The ninth week of training is referred to as “Hell Week.” It is six days of no sleep, constant physical and mental harassment and — one special day at the Mud Flats. The Mud Flats are an area between San Diego and Tijuana where the water runs off and creates the Tijuana slues — a swampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you.
It is on Wednesday of Hell Week that you paddle down to the mud flats and spend the next 15 hours trying to survive the freezing-cold mud, the howling wind and the incessant pressure to quit from the instructors.
As the sun began to set that Wednesday evening, my training class, having committed some “egregious infraction of the rules,” was ordered into the mud.
The mud consumed each man till there was nothing visible but our heads. The instructors told us we could leave the mud if only five men would quit — just five men and we could get out of the oppressive cold.
Looking around the mud flat, it was apparent that some students were about to give up. It was still over eight hours till the sun came up — eight more hours of bone-chilling cold.
The chattering teeth and shivering moans of the trainees were so loud, it was hard to hear anything, and then, one voice began to echo through the night — one voice raised in song.
The song was terribly out of tune, but sung with great enthusiasm.
One voice became two, and two became three, and before long everyone in the class was singing.
We knew that if one man could rise above the misery, then others could as well.
The instructors threatened us with more time in the mud if we kept up the singing — but the singing persisted.
And somehow — the mud seemed a little warmer, the wind a little tamer and the dawn not so far away.
If I have learned anything in my time traveling the world, it is the power of hope. The power of one person — Washington, Lincoln, King, Mandela and even a young girl from Pakistan, Malala — one person can change the world by giving people hope.
So, if you want to change the world, start singing when you’re up to your neck in mud…
Photo: Getty Images
Finally, in SEAL training there is a bell. A brass bell that hangs in the center of the compound for all the students to see.
All you have to do to quit — is ring the bell. Ring the bell and you no longer have to wake up at 5 o’clock. Ring the bell and you no longer have to do the freezing-cold swims.
Ring the bell and you no longer have to do the runs, the obstacle course, the PT — and you no longer have to endure the hardships of training.
Just ring the bell.
If you want to change the world, don’t ever, ever ring the bell…
I have said it time and time again.
