The Enemies of Focus

In today’s age, why is the concept of focus needed more than ever?

I’ve learned one thing in 2008:  Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer…unless your friends and enemies are on Facebook. Otherwise you can kiss your time and focus goodbye.

After catching up on some nugget-filled blog posts this morning, I came across a trail of articles that really sparked some thought. Really, though, I didn’t just “star” it in my Google reader like I normally would; I actually stopped and thought about the posts (Yes, I realize thinking is rare in the world of social media…just kidding…but seriously…)

Anyways, the theme of the articles revolved around renewing focus. This act, which is much harder than ever before in the history of (wo)mankind, is rather rare in today’s age.

Who cares about how rare it is? The most important thing is this: working 6 hours with purposeful, concentrated effort, is much more effective than those who work 12 hours with bursts of focus (like your parents probably did, and still do).

Here’s an excerpt that Lifehacker uncovered, which puts it out there nicely:

A person who works six hours a day but with total focus has an enormous advantage over a 12-hour-per-day workaholic who’s “multi-tasking” all day, answering every phone call, constantly checking Facebook and Twitter, and indulging every interruption. It’s time we upgraded our work ethic for the age we’re living in, not our grandparents’ age. Hard work is still a virtue, but now takes a distant second place to the new determinant of success or failure in the age of Internet distractions: Control of attention. Hard work is dead. Are you paying attention?

Another snippet is from a post titled, “The New Work Ethic: Just Paying Attention”

Distractions mask the toll they take on productivity. Everyone finishes up their work days exhausted, but how much of that exhaustion is from real work, how much from the mental effort of fighting off distractions and how much from the indulgence of distractions?

Pundits like me are constantly talking about Facebook, Twitter, blogs and humor sites, not to mention old standbys like e-mail and IM. One gets the impression that we should be “following” these things all day long, and many do. So when does the work get done? When do entrepreneurs start and manage their businesses? When do writers write that novel? When do IT professionals keep the trains running on time? When does anyone do anything?

Precisely.

When does anyone do anything?

We witness writers, CEO’s and marketing “specialists” twitter what they do throughout the day: “Eating a hotdog right now.” “Surfing the net.” “Watching the Real Housewives of Orange County” “Sipping a latte.” “Observing the Cowboys lose.” “Searching through Blogger Bill’s Archives” “Reading: article which is glittered in subtle self promotion.”

…and on, and on, and on.

I’d love to see an author like Seth Godin write a tweet, “Writing right now, when I don’t want to.” “Doing my taxes.” “Doing yard work.” “Writing out some goals.” “Balancing checkbook.” ”

Those types of tweets are rare.

Why?

Most people who dive into grunt work, don’t want to sacrifice their focus for “tweeting” to a cyber-space hole.  They value what’s real: life.

And this brings us to the main intention of this post: what to avoid in order to maintain your focus in a time of unrelenting distraction:

Here are five enemies of focus:

1) Facebook/Myspace:

At what point does a social network become so addicting that it becomes a drug? People literally live on facebook. They toil away for hours upon hours, checking out what their friends did the night before. Who they’re talking to. Who they recently “friended.” Who likes what band. It’s an endless information cesspool.

You don’t need to hang out with a person to get to know them anymore. Just “friend” them on facebook or myspace and you’ll have all the info you need.

Facebook’s killed the process of getting to know a person (in many cases… unless you add a long-time friend to your network).

The scary thing about these social networks is that people have grown to value the “newsfeed” on facebook more than actual real-life get together’s.

I’ve witnessed it before. A lifestyle occurs that emulates something like this:

1. Wake up

2. Log into facebook (30 seconds)

3. Check out the news feed (10 minutes)

4. Click on events/wall posts/status updates/pictures (1 hour goes by)

5. Upload pictures (5 minutes)

6. T.V. (check mobile facebook app for comments)

7. Commercial break – check out facebook and reply to comments (15 minutes)

8. Back to T.V. (rewind on Tivo what you’ve missed)

9. Facebook status update

10. Text message (“What are you doing tonight?”)

11. Repeat steps 3-9 until 6pm

12. Go out at night (with camera, of course)

13. Take pictures

14. Repeat steps 1-13

2) Tech Blogs:

Do you know the difference between a revolutionary company and an evolutionary company?

A revolutionary company is one that shifts or creates an industry: Google or Twitter

An evolutionary company is one that builds onto a “shifter,” making it bigger, adding features or implementing a unique twist: iphone applications, firefox extensions, facebook apps

Most tech blogs post stories about evolutionary start-ups. These posts tend to be PR coated information blasts, which offer very little value and have a life of 3-9 months. Reading about them is usually a waste of time. You can easily lose focus if you get sucked into these posts (reading more than the header).

It’s easy to get sucked into the Twitter hype with new extensions being built into Twitter everyday.

Try this exercise, head over to KillerStartups or TechCrunch, search the word “Twitter,” and have fun sorting through hundreds of add-ons that do nothing revolutionary: Twtpoll? DM Fail? Twittervision? Twubble? Tweettree? Twittority? Tweetbay? Tweetspace? Twitangle?

These are NTK’s (“nice-to-knows”), not PILF’s (“Posts I Like to Fathom”)

3) Free E-Books

You’ll find that free E-Books have a purpose hidden within the text: to get you to buy one of the following items: (i) their product, (ii) their service (consulting), (iii) their hard-copy book, or (iv) prepare you for their new book coming out in two weeks.

4) Twitter Add-ons

Twitter is great; when it doesn’t crowd out your life. Twitter can be bad (like anything in excess), when you focus on the add-ons. You can easily get lost and sacrafice tons of time/focus.

5) MMORPG’s

This was the first dosage of web 2.0 (which I translate to mean people + technology). There have been some unfortunate stories that have stemmed from these games (Everquest deaths, Real-life fights, etc.)

Bottom Line:

Monitor what you spend your time on, what sites you habitually open, and equally important, seek to acknowledge the tendencies you’ve formed around social media. Take control of these in 2009. Make focus and balance a priority.

Do these five elements hinder or enhance focus?

I’ve rambled on enough. Tell me what you think.