Episode 1233: Creating Focus for Your Time

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,233 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. I'm

[00:00:07] Christina Stanton: Christina Stanton. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to find faith even in the face of tremendous challenges is key.

[00:00:27] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this The Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend Scott n.

[00:00:36] Scott Maderer: You'll never 100% eliminate distractions and things that pull away your focus. So instead, the goal isn't to do that. It isn't to get absolute focus. The goal is to learn how to deal with distractions and interruptions as quickly as possible so that we can get back to focusing on the thing that we really want to.

[00:00:59] [00:01:00] Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true column. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that.

[00:01:23] Can impact the world

[00:01:26] in today's episode about impacting the world by stewarding your time, I talk with you about the value of focus. I also share why multitasking and switch tasking is so harmful to your productivity, and I share with you some tips on how you can gain more focus. As we talk about stewarding your time, wouldn't it be great if you could support this podcast and do it without just taking too long?

[00:01:50] Turns out you can't. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. When you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon, and a small [00:02:00] commission will come back to support the show. Just that quick. If you enjoy the show, when you're ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/.

[00:02:10] almost everyone understands the idea of focus. This idea of bringing attention to something or paying attention to one thing at the exclusion of all other things. In fact, a lot of people. When you think about attention deficit, a d, a lot of people think of that as a deficit of focus, not having enough.

[00:02:34] And it can be, but it also can be having way too much focus on the wrong or inappropriate things. It can not only be not enough, it can also be too much, but just not being able to channel it in the direction that you want it to. Focus is that skill that we have of paying attention to a particular thought or task or goal [00:03:00] for a certain amount of time without allowing distractions or other ideas or other tasks to come in and interrupt you.

[00:03:09] And the truth is a lot of times focus can be really hard because of outside things that we have little control over. Having small children at home while you're trying to work from home, or having other coworkers that come in, or even your boss having some feeling that they can just interrupt you at will.

[00:03:29] So there's certainly things that make it harder to focus, but even there. Focus is something that usually we understand as a great deal of power. It helps us take big task and get them done in a quality way. And focus is a skill. It is something that you can develop and grow and build over time, especially when it comes to your time management and your ability to focus and get [00:04:00] things done in a effective.

[00:04:03] We all know that having a lack of focus can be an obstacle to productivity and having more focus is something that can help us with productivity. And one of the biggest barriers to that is the idea of multitasking or switch tasking. and I call 'em both of those things because multitasking is the idea of doing more than one task at a time.

[00:04:27] But in reality, what usually we really mean by multitasking is I'm working on one thing and then I start doing something else, and then I go back to the first thing, and then I switch back to something new, and then I switch back to the second thing, and then I switch back to the first thing. It's really more switching or flipping between tasks than it is doing things at the same.

[00:04:50] Multitasking is something that we often feel makes us more productive. We often think it's a good thing to be a good [00:05:00] multitask. And I'll give you a hint. There's no such thing as a good multitasker when they do brain studies and look at how we function. Multitasking always makes us less efficient.

[00:05:12] It always makes us less productive. It always makes us get worse results over time, and yet culturally. It's looked at as, Oh, they're a good multitasker. That's means that they're very productive. They're able to get a lot done at the same time, and that makes them very effective. If we're working on a focused task while we're listening to music, while we're also checking our email, that ability to split our attention is looked at as a beneficial thing, when in reality it's devastating to our ability to focus.

[00:05:45] And it actually becomes a habit. It makes it where if you don't have multiple things going on at the same time, then you feel less productive and you feel less able to get things done, even though in reality you might be more [00:06:00] focused. It's something that happens to all of us, and yet it makes us forgetful.

[00:06:05] It makes us disorganized. It lowers the quality of our work. Empirically, you can actually measure that. You can see that people who switch task and multitask are less effective and less efficient, and yet we think the opposite. So if we take this as a given that focus is a powerful tool and can help us be more productive, what are some things that we can do to make ourselves more focused?

[00:06:34] One of them is getting our environment in. It turns out having a lot of disorganization and a lot of mess around you actually makes your brain begin to pay attention to other things. You also can work to get rid of things that are distractions. Put your phone away in a drawer and even lock the drawer while you're trying to do a focus task.

[00:06:57] You can recognize the idea [00:07:00] that focus is something that you. And recognize that if you take a task that you wanna do and you visualize yourself doing it, visualize the results, really get in touch emotionally and physically with how it will feel to be able to achieve that. But then also go a step further and picture what challenges you will have, what distractions you will have, and come up with a plan ahead of.

[00:07:29] that when those distractions happen, what will you do in response? How will you block them out? How Will you return as quickly as you can to the original task? This is where having a meditation habit can help because having the ability to meditate and focus and be able to return whenever your brain gets off task to return to the focus at hand quickly and effectively.

[00:07:54] That's what meditation helps you develop these skill to. Working on things like [00:08:00] gratitude and working on things like a time management plan or a budget for your time ahead of time, and again, visualizing what will you do when things go wrong and building time into your day to deal with the fact that things will go wrong.

[00:08:16] To practice the habits of focus, putting your phone away and working on just one task, shutting down the email programs and the other things that are there that will cause you to get distracted. devising, Good morning, evening routines and work start and work. Shutdown routines can help you with focus.

[00:08:41] Doing all of these things that, some of which seem really small and somewhat disconnected from your ability to focus actually over time and doing them over and over again begins to build the mental. Of dealing with distractions and returning to the [00:09:00] task at hand as quickly as possible. You'll never 100% eliminate distractions and things that pull away your focus.

[00:09:08] So instead, the goal isn't to do that. It isn't to get absolute focus. The goal is to learn how to deal with distractions and interruptions as quickly as possible so that we can get back to focusing on the thing that we really want to. Thanks for listening.

[00:09:27] Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you like this episode on the stewardship of Time, be sure to sign. For our stewardship of time tips series by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting 4 [00:10:00] 4, 2 2 2 time tips and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time.

[00:10:09] Until next time, invest your. Your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.