Where did our focus go? Rethinking work in a world primed to make us procrastinate
Learn how to focus and make your work more meaningful with this expert advice...
Sally Saunders
The way we work has changed a lot in the last few years, and not always for the better. If you’re struggling to learn how to find your focus, discover how to tune in and make your work more meaningful and more enjoyable than ever…
Full disclosure here: I’ve never been the most confident person in the world. But if you had asked me a few years ago what my biggest strength was, I’d have had two words ready and waiting for you: Laser. Focus. I was up there with the best of them when it came to knowing how to focus, working at high speed, with accuracy and skill, never distracted from a task until it was complete. And, then…sorry, what was I saying?
Yes, somewhere along the line, the focus I relied upon during the first 10 years of my career seems to have gone AWOL. Ebbed away. Dried up. Disappeared. Vamooshed. Whatever way you want to put it, it’s gone. And, right now, I really wish it would come back.
After all, I have a lot to do. Mmy inbox is full of tasks: arrange a logo, pay an invoice, agree a page design. All are urgent; each one needs doing this instant (or sooner). And now I’ve decided to write this article, in the slightly forlorn hope that I might just jolt myself into rediscovering a little bit of that laser-focus magic I used to own.
Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I don’t work hard. I spend hours at my laptop daily, am frequently in meetings, and constantly replying to emails. But at the end of most days I find myself asking, ‘Where did all the time go?’ Officially, I tell myself that I only work part time, but frequently my tasks seem to expand into all available space, spilling over into my ‘days off’ and beyond. And I’m not alone.
Losing the work life balance
On a basic level, the way we work now has changed. Like so many office-based workers, I’ve seen my daily routine change massively over the last decade, especially as I’m no longer an office based worker. ‘The lines between what is work and what is home have blurred,’ says Dr Emma Yhnell, a senior neuroscience lecturer at Cardiff University.
.‘Previously, we were able to use commuting time to decompress, putting a literal gap between work and home.’ Now, many of us face more distractions during the working day – be it the kids, the dog, or the washing – and the environment at home is psychologically very different.
We feel more comfortable, and when we are online, we don’t have the same social cues to encourage us to keep going. This new way of working is really tiring, says Dr Yhnell: ‘The constant use of screens takes its toll. Where before we may have alternated our work, spending some time at a screen, then meeting in person, now we no longer get a break.’
That certainly feels true to me. I find myself constantly swapping from computer-based task to computer-based task, checking emails whilst waiting for an image to download. Not a second is wasted – or so I tell myself.
Are you mainly focused on busyness?
My story of spending hours being very, very busy but rarely managing to accomplish all my tasks is familiar to life coach Julia Wolfendale, author of Five Ways To Focus (On The Up Books, £9.99). ‘A lot of the time, we’re caught up with the “busy”, and the busy seems to be driven by the external, by what we think are other people’s expectations of us,’ Wolfendale explains.
‘That might be our boss, or it might be something that we’re seeing on social media: these are the holidays we should be having, these are the things we should be doing with our children, these are the things we should have achieved by now in our careers.
‘All that external stimulation can lead to a sense of unease and dissatisfaction, and challenge yourself-worth,’ she explains. ‘And one way we counteract that is by being busy all the time. We wear it like a big badge, something to be proud of. I think understanding your own personal connection to busyness is important. Why does it matter to you?’
On reflection, I have a sneaking suspicion that I combat difficult feelings of impostor syndrome by keeping busy with work, then feel frustrated when it doesn’t necessarily mean getting good work done.
For other people, it might be a case of ‘presenteeism’, and showing a demanding boss that you are working hard by being always available on email, always on camera in meetings. Whatever your reason, is it really such a bad thing, I ask.
‘Busy for the sake of busy can lead to burnout,’ Wolfendale warns. ‘So I say beware. Ask yourself, why is it so important to you to be busy. Is it more important that you’re productive, and you enjoy doing the things you feel matter and are meaningful?‘
It’s worth having an honest conversation with yourself and asking, “Why is it that busy feels so crucial to me?” If you’re getting a lot of self-worth from it, you may find you have taken your focus away from what it is that really matters to you.
Are we obsessed with productivity?
Just as busyness has become a cult for many of us there is also a drive to be seen as productive. Whether it’s balancing multiple roles or trying to move forward in your career, increased productivity has become the holy grail. There have been a slew of books and podcasts promising to make us productivity superstars, helping us to ‘smash it’ every day, working longer, harder, smarter. And procrastination is still a dirty word.
But it’s a trend that has caused Dr Alice Boyes, psychologist turned author of Stress-Free Productivity (Ebury, £12.99), to fear the impact on our mental health.
‘I’ve been writing about this area for years now. There has been a huge push towards developing habits of focus, discipline and willpower in order to get more done,’ she explains. ‘But, remember, you’re not working to be the most productive writer, or the most productive lawyer. That’s not the point of your life. Productivity alone isn’t the end goal.
‘This constant focus on churning out work is treating us like robots,’ says Dr Boyes. ‘But humans make poor robots – let’s focus on being human! Your experiences outside of work – your hobbies, your interests, the things that make you different from everyone else who has followed the same career path – are part of your package. And when you bring those into work, you might come up with an idea no one else could ever have thought of.’
How to focus on quality over quantity
I decided to write this article a few weeks ago, when I found myself grumbling about my lapses in attention to a friend. I was telling her how I was struggling to fit everything in to my part-time hours, as the many different parts of my job conflicted with each other.
‘I don’t want to work harder, just smarter,’ I explained. I’d been taught the phrase on management courses and it seemed to make sense at the time. But did it really apply to me?
After all, it wasn’t like I was wasting my time on Instagram or watching cat videos. (I’d already installed a productivity app on my computer that patted me on the head and told me I was a good girl and wasted very little time-larking about on social media.)
Going in the right direction
‘One of the main ideas around focus is that goofing off and being distracted is our big problem,’ reflects Dr Alice Boyes. ‘Even though there are some problems with human self-regulation, we’re actually reasonably good at that.
‘I think the bigger problem is doing huge volumes of the type of work that doesn’t really matter. People are trying to learn and succeed and grow through doing massive amounts. However, it’s just not useful for producing really innovative work. And it’s not useful for mental health.
‘I always say, the direction you’re rowing in is going to be far more determinant of where you end up than how fast you’re rowing. So it’s not dossing about a little here and there that’s going to stop you doing something meaningful, but expending all your energy on moderately productive work.’
Making time for creativity
‘Often, people don’t push themselves to be bold,’ Dr Boyes explains. ‘The vast majority of people don’t put any focus on creativity. But the effort that you put into trying to be innovative is proportional to what success you have. It’s not about how much work you do, but the quality of the work you do – the meaningful, impactful work that you do.’
It’s an issue I recognise all too well. We all have those tasks that need to be done – frequently urgently – and so we shift them to the front of the queue; to the top of our to-do list. Whereas the important, creative, thinking work that takes time but could make a difference, continues to linger at the bottom.
‘We often see urgency leading to inefficiency,’ agrees Dr Boyes. ‘It’s easy to spend time doing things that are urgent but aren’t that important. These tasks with short deadlines tend to be shorter tasks. Shorter tasks tend to be less innovative, because long tasks often mean harder problems. So we do them, tick them off, and perhaps get a quick thrill of satisfaction.
‘But with longer tasks, you go much deeper, and you can bring so much more of yourself to them. You learn the skills you need for them over a period of time – you develop more connections around them. You give more focus to them, but you can also get much more back in return.’
Why learning how to find focus matters
Since the dawn of time, human beings have had to deal with distractions. Our cave women ancestors no doubt found it tough to focus on collecting enough berries for tea, if they also had to make sure that the baby wasn’t getting eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger.
But why has it suddenly become such a crucial issue? Julia Wolfendale believes the pandemic could well be a “change point”. ‘This is something I’ve come across a lot in my work with clients. It’s a point of change that leads to people suddenly reassessing things,’ she says.
‘It might be a milestone age, kids leaving home, a divorce. And the pandemic has created an even bigger change point. It’s led us all to wonder “Is this it?” and ask “What’s next? What am I supposed to do now?”
‘So, if that’s how you’re feeling, you have to get back to what matters to you. Forget the boss for a minute. Forget all the other demands on you and all the expectations that are telling you what you should be doing and how you should be doing it. And just take the time to focus on you,’ urges Wolfendale.
‘That means asking yourself the question: What really matters? What brings you here? Why is it that you want to find focus in your life? And what would it help you to do, if you did have focus?
‘It’s like finding your guiding light,’ says Wolfendale, ‘because once you know that, it’s within you, and you can keep checking back in and use it to reset. You can use that same information to point your way forward. This will mean that the decisions you make in life – the things you spend your time on – are driven by the things that matter to you.
‘And when you look at the results – when you’re actually trying to generate the work you’re actually interested in, and doing work that matters to you – you’re going to feel so much happier. That’s when you realise you’re focusing on what matters, rather than just focusing on getting stuff done.’
