Community Post: Focus Determines Reality

When I worked at a community college designing training programs for local businesses, one of my instructors (Ann) took it upon herself to help me learn a simpler way of working. She noticed my constantly divided and distracted attention, and she knew I would drown without an effective tool for simplifying and focusing. So, she taught me to use a Master List.

Basically, a Master List lists all the projects needing accomplished. Then you create a daily and/or weekly list of focus items. Ideally, you only choose the number of items you realistically can accomplish that day/week. From those few items, you then focus on one at a time through to completion. The other items on the Master List simply needed to wait.

Ann emphasized a valuable life principle when she taught me about - and insisted I use - a Master List. Namely, nothing is a priority when too many things are a priority. She helped me realize I needed to deliberately focus my attention rather than allow it to become divided under the myth that multi-tasking - focusing on more than one task/project at a time - actually leads to efficient productivity.

Undivided Attention

Most busy people brag to some extent about their ability to multitask. At least, I know I did. But research now proves that multitasking actually results in less productivity because quality suffers severely. In fact…

“People who did several things at once did all of them worse that those who focused on one thing at a time.”

Not only does quality suffer when we multitask, we get worse at multitasking the more we do it.

“In most human endeavors, practicing an activity makes you better at it. Not so with multitasking: Veteran multitaskers are actually less efficient than people who just started doing it.”

In other words, the more we divide our attention, the less productive we are and the less quality work we produce. Conversely, when we stop trying to multitask and instead focus our attention, eliminate distractions as much as possible, and quit trying to be all things to all people, we find simplicity of focus that results in increased productivity and effectiveness.

Focus Determines Reality

Simplicity in the workplace, and in any are of life for that matter, involves learning to single-task again, regardless of the volume of work, and it won’t likely happen in big leaps but rather in small steps as we adjust to a more focused way of thinking. In addition to using tools like a Master List, these small changes involve learning Simplicity Principles such as saying “no” to good to be able to say “yes” to better and best and making technology a tool instead of being its slave. Doing so helps gradually decrease chaos and increase peace.

When Ann taught me how to keep my focus from being divided too much at work, she had no idea she was also leading me to a better understanding of an important Biblical principle, illustrated in many places in Scripture including Proverbs 4:25-27.

“Look straight ahead, and fix your eyes on what lies before you. Mark out a straight path for your feet; then stick to the path and stay safe. Don’t get sidetracked; keep your feet from following evil.”

As Christians, a focus on Christ - or not - determines the reality of our lives. Determining to follow the marked path found in Scripture keeps our focus on Him, our reality grounded in Him and our attention from going to anything but Him.

Certainly in the workplace but especially in our spiritual lives, divided attention results in a wavering mind. And a wavering mind exists absent of any semblance of simplicity. Refuse to live in mental and spiritual chaos. Determine to not be divided and pulled and distracted.

Instead, deliberately decide your focus each day, week, month, year and beyond. Use the tools available to determine your reality by deciding where to direct and keep your focus. In doing so, you’ll soon discover a growing simplicity not only in the workplace but in every area of life.

Kari Scare blogs at Struggle to Victory where she focuses on encouraging small changes that over time add up to make a huge difference. Kari lives in Michigan with her husband and two sons.

Simplicity at Work

In our complicated, 21st century, high-tech, high-speed world, people have begun to crave a simpler approach to life and work. In the series Simplicity at Work, The High Calling explores simplicity in the places we work and the ways we work; and, perhaps more subtly, we want to explore simplicity at work in us through a variety of stories that reveal ways people find freedom and success when they simplify. Join us for Bible reflections, featured articles, and discussion. Invite your colleagues to do the same.

Image by Tim Miller. Used with permission. Sourced via Flickr.