Maintaining Focus

Trouble staying focussed on the important things?

I’ve found my motivation and activity levels fluctuating somewhat during the past month.

My early personal promise to establish routines and be more strategic in my daily activities is seeing progress – but there are days when I’m all over the place.

You know how it goes – it seems like we’re lost in a mental fog. Has my brain gone all mushy and full of cloud puffs or is it like my PC – just needs a reset and clear out some old files?

On some days I find it hard to concentrate on the things that matter. As I get older, my memory is not as it once was (the filing cabinet is fuller these days and the retrieval system can be rusty at times). So when I'm distracted, my communication skills wander as well.

I know I suffer from these because I’m trying to do too many things, and it's too easy to get distracted. It’s been a lifelong problem for me, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I address this by dividing my activities into segments – eg training, site content, personal & social, financial etc. I then prioritise activities within each segment. This is a continuous process, and my list usually has things that will probably never get done.

My ability to think up useful things to do is well beyond my capacity to do them all. But by listing them, sorting and prioritising, I believe I don't miss out on too much. It's just too bad for the ideas that aren't quite as good as some others.

This requires a regular re-evaluation of importance (I use impact and urgency). Sometimes I feel that I spend too much time doing this - i.e. too much planning, not enough doing. But if you believe in the Pareto Principle that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts - it makes sense to stay fiocussed on the imore important stuff. Just don't lose track.

One secret is to establish routines. The you can parcel your time into blocks and stay focussed on a single topic.

As we’ve just moved to the country after a year and a half travelling, this is something that I'm finding harder to do. As an example, we’ve just had three sets of visitors over the past 4 weekends – so it feels we’re constantly either entertaining or recovering. Of course that’s the quality part of life that we strive for – so don’t knock it.

This is a picture of our dog Charlie with two of our chooks in the back yard. Not really relevant to the post but just to give an idea of our lifestyle.

We also haven’t got the house quite set up as we want – so there’s a large DIY and project management component to consider. But this is also part of a positive life, and isn't that we strive for.

Underneath it all, I am achieving most of the goals that I set for January, so am feeling good about my progress. My solution to maintaining focus and be less distracted is to revise my monthly and weekly planning with discrete tasks to be achieved.

If you get on top of your To Do list you'll be amazed at how quickly the fog will lift. Keep a strategic midset, work on the most important tasks and put time aside for yourself. Life is for living, not you work to make a life, not live to work. Get your list working for you, not controlling you - after all, it's YOUR list.

For February I’ve scaled my targets back a bit – just in case. I lose enthusiasm if it looks like I'm going to miss by a long way, and targets should be realistic within the life we lead. Better to over-achieve than be disheartened by missing goals. If I was at a different stage of life this process would probably be a little different. I think it’s up to everyone to work out their own processes, schedules and priorities.

One of my distractions is researching various topics for my sites (I have 2 now, the 2nd being a brand new, meeting one of my January challenges). Currently I’ve been looking into brain fog. I have a clear idea of what causes my own, but found the topic quite interesting.

Apparently brain fog is a result of any type of imbalance in the control center of the brain, otherwise known as the hypothalamus. This imbalance can be a result of inflammation, free radicals or any type of stress brought on by several factors. Here’s a list, with my own situation commented on:

• Multi-tasking – that’s me
• Exhaustion – only after visitors have left
• Anxiety – never been a problem for me, but I know it’s a killer for others
• PTSD – this must be really hard to deal with
• Imbalanced hormones – I’ll have to talk to my wife about that
• Infections – not currently
• Not getting enough sun exposure – hardly a problem in the SouthWest of Western Australia with our fantastic beaches
• Substance abuse – no confessions here, but a wine or two too many does occur from time to time. It's only natural when you live in wine country.

Even though mental fog is natural as a result of our busy, nonstop lifestyles, it shouldn’t happen all th etime or too frequently. I think brain fog is a natural experience - we just don't want to have too much of it. At the end of the day it's completely manageable. Mine is.

Enjoy the ride - it's a lot of fun!

David