Forget time management
Master this attention technique to meet all your productivity goals
Raise your hand if you no longer trust yourself to remember everything you need to do. Keep your hand up if you’re so entrenched in knee-jerk reaction mode that the moment a “quick little task” pops into your head, you drop whatever you’re doing and take care of it right away lest it slip through the cracks.
It’s an easy trap to fall into. Our lives are brimmingwith distractions. Unless we make deliberate choices about what to focus on at any given moment, it’s virtually impossible to get anything meaningful done.
Time management alonewon’t solve the problem because no amount of calendarTetris can alter theway your brain functions. The missing piece is a mental practice known as attention management — the art of consciously setting aside trivial matters and directing our focus to bigger, more important things.
Attention management isn’t about eliminating distractions, says author and coachMaura Thomas. It’s a matter of being intentional about howyou respond to them— specifically, giving the most attention to the most meaningful, highimpact tasks. For individuals, the tactics include ruthlessly scrutinizing your to-do list, setting up a focus-friendly work environment and banishing all attempts at multitasking.
But can attention management benefit teams? Can its principles be applied at the organization level? The answer is yes. For teams and companies, the approach is similar, but with a few tweaks to account for the group dynamics in play.
Howto practice attention management at scale
No matter howgood your team is at formulating a strategy or mapping out bold initiatives, you’ll never get the results youwant if everyone accidentally fritters away their time (and energy) on low-impact activities. The bestway to prevent that is by taking deliberate, conscious measures like these.
1. Stay connected to the “why”:
When you’re trying to push a big rock up a hill, at some point you’re going towonder if the payoff is reallyworth all this effort. When that moment comes, a sharp sense of purpose will help you resist the temptation to prop the rock in place and go lie downandwatch a cat video.
Whatever your team’s “big rock” is, everyone should have a shared understanding ofwhy you’re tackling it. If you haven’t already, spend a few minutes in your next team or project meeting discussing that. Then, as you go along, put that “why” statement at the top of every document, chart, Slack channel and slide deck related to the project for reinforcement.
2. Prioritize ruthlessly, decline compassionately:
For medium- to long-term prioritization, nothing beats the Objectives andKey Results (OKRs) framework pioneered by Google. As a team, you’ll define two or three highlevel objectives to pursue. These objectives are either the “big rocks” themselves, or components of a single big rock. For each objective, you’ll define two or three measurable results, which, if achieved, will tell you that you’re on the right track. Then throughout the quarter or year, you’ll assess and score your progress against your key results. When laid out in a shared document, OKRs become a touchstone for the team to refer to when new requests or ideas come their way. If the activity furthers one of your objectives, find away to make space for it. If not, gently decline to take it on right now, but consider revisiting the idea later.
Another helpful technique is the “Eisenhower matrix.” It’s a two-by-two grid for sorting all thework on your plate and in your backlog by urgency and importance. Use itwhen grooming your team’s backlog— which, in an ideal world, you’ll do about every month or so — and to assess ad hocwork as it comes up.
3. Foster a focus-friendly team culture:
Meetings, chat, and email are essential elements of collaboration. They’re also concentration killers. Productivity gurus implore us to set aside time specifically for checking email, and to leave it alone other than that so you can have longer periods of focusedwork.
As a team, agree on howfast you expect each other to respond to e-mail or chat, and a contingency plan for when you need each other’s attention right away. For example, you might decide that emails and chat pings should be answered within three hours, with a phone call or shoulder tap as the emergency signal. Often, remoteworkersworry their teammates will think they’re sluffing off if they don’t respond immediately. So they respond right away, but at the cost of their own productivity.
As for meetings, establish mutually agreed upon scheduled blocks ofmeeting-free time (sometimes called “time locks”).
4. Be accountability buddies for each other:
People don’t give the daily stand-up enough credit. Sure, it’s a quick way to get status updates, but it’s also a gentle accountability mechanism. As each person shares their progress since last time and their plan for today, the manager or project lead has an opportunity to make sure everyone is focused on the most importantwork and help course-correct if needed.
Attention-management tips for individuals
Of course, all this will be for naught if team members don’t practice attention management as individuals. So I’ll leave you with a few tips.
■ Set your chat status to “do not disturb” when you need uninterrupted time to focus.
■ Put your phone away or silence it whileworking.
■ Close all unnecessary browser tabs and applications on your computer when you need to concentrate.
■ Take breaks throughout the daywhere you’re not looking at a screen at all.
■ Check the news, social media and personal email in between tasks, not in themiddle of them.
■ If a new item for your to-do list pops into your head during focusedwork, jot it down on a piece of paper and come back to it later.
Ultimately, attention management— and the self-discipline it requires— comes fromwithin. Proving once again that the technology that fuels our modern lifestyle is equal parts blessing and curse.