“Intense concentration for hour after
hour can bring out resources in people that they didn't know they had.”_Edwin
Land
In this age
of unlimited distractions, it is quite easy for anyone to spend a huge chunk of
his or her days in sub-optimal engagements with little or no awareness.
If we want
to guard ourselves from that kind of limiting experience, we need to take a
proactive step to save ourselves from the insidious pull of daily diversions.
To achieve
that, a simple strategy we can employ boils down to focusing on the hardest
thing first, or as Brian Tracy would say, eating our ‘biggest frog first.’
And it means
giving the best of our mental and physical energy to our biggest task of the
day. After we accomplish that, we can then go a little easy on ourselves with
how we apportion what’s left of our time, energy and attention to the rest of
activities in the day.
Those preceding
sentences align with the thinking of Steve Jobs who once hinted that if we
adopt focus and simplicity on how we work, we can achieve something truly
remarkable.
Simplicity
and focus are all it takes to make the most our days. Complexity and
distraction will always keep us away from performing at our dead-level best.
We need to
optimize our limited human resources by expending them on our most valuable
priorities earlier in the day before the pull of distractions can get a chance
to interfere with our personal effectiveness.
We need to
eschew ‘busy being busy’ and instead be mono-maniacally focused on creating
results that really matter.
Alas! It is
amazing how effective one can be when he or she habitually focuses on the
hardest thing first, everyday, before any distraction could ever get in the
way.
Undoubtedly,
it is much easier to do something great when interruptions don’t bid for our attention
most of the time. The reason so few of us achieve what we are truly capable of
is that we don’t adequately direct our focus; we rarely concentrate our mind on
what really matters.
Finally, I challenge
you—here and now— to start procrastinating on low value activities at the start
of your days so can give maximum attention to the hardest things that can
create breakthroughs in your life.
