Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day (Ignite Reads)

by Maura Thomas

We’re hung up on the old-fashioned idea of managing time, but to live the lives we really want to live, what we actually need to master is managing our attention.

Here’s the bottom line: The job of the internet is to keep you on the internet. We’re stuck in a productivity paradox: we need these tools to do our jobs, but the job of these tools is to keep us using the tools at the expense of doing our jobs…or anything else!

But as the nature of work changed, time management ideas didn’t. Today, they are outdated. If you still make a list every morning, it probably becomes obsolete as soon as you check your email. We all grapple with an influx of communication previous generations couldn’t have imagined, and everything seems urgent. That makes it harder to prioritize.

In other words, your attention determines the experiences you have, and when looking back on your life, it’s easy to see that the experiences you have determine the life you live. Therefore, you must control your attention to control your life.

You are fully attentive and absorbed in the task at hand. You can’t enter flow at will—it’s not a behavior but a state your brain enters all on its own when the right conditions are present.

We can’t will ourselves into flow (our brain isn’t obedient that way), but what we can do is set up the conditions for flow, thereby increasing the odds it will happen.

Give each day of the week a theme from this chapter. For example: •Monday: single-task using a timer for increasing periods of time during which you can comfortably focus on only one thing. •Tuesday: take two breaks during which you sit still, outside if possible, by yourself and without your devices. •Wednesday: do two short, guided meditations to help you build up to a longer, more frequent practice. •Thursday: read at least one chapter from a nonfiction book or a long-form article on something that interests you or that you want to become an expert in. •Friday: engage in a mentally challenging activity, such as playing chess, taking a class, or learning a new language. •Saturday: get out in nature for an hour or more and leave your phone behind. •Sunday: do something with another person you enjoy spending time with. Keep your phones out of sight, practice transformational listening, and offer the other person the gift of your full presence and attention.