ONE FOMO AT A TIME
Tuesday, November 24, 2020
Investigating every inane diversion steals time from our task, meeting, or intended focus – yet never gives back that lost time or recreates our evaporated concentration.
More than lost time, we diminish our quality of focus while draining energy – our minds moving toward sleep the way failing batteries figure out they’ve run down to ineffectiveness …
One focus at a time – one task at a time, one person at a time – is difficult enough, but how can we do our best at anything when attention is distracted/divided?
Concentration is like a prime number – it does not divide. Once split in any proportion, it ceases to be concentrated. Measuring the quality of what we should be proud of after the fact as ‘what great work product or piece of art, or deed of good, I was responsible for today,’ gets tricky if we delude ourselves that we concentrate hard, giving our best, to any of it.
Multi-tasking has its place, but we overrate its value and underestimate its diluted impact on everything on our agenda.
How often do you check email or texts during a meeting? Or during a Zoom call? How often does someone’s pinging or ringing phone interrupt a conversation?
When you consider media, social media, ringing phones, incoming emails, Zoom, people crossing our paths – every one of these, like a squirrel to an unleashed puppy, we scramble away from what we were supposed to be working on, dreaming on, or studying.
We are collectively getting far-worse at this than far better.
How many distractions can we handle?