Yesterday I talked about how I hide out once a week: I work remotely to avoid distraction so that I can focus on my most important tasks. Today I would like to unpack this for you even more.
We have trained ourselves to respond to urgency, regardless of importance.
Imagine being in class and you feel your phone buzz. Do you check it? Does it gnaw at you whether you check it or not?
Maybe instead of being in class, it’s the same situation while you’re having dinner with our family. You spent all day looking forward to being back together, and then DING.
The problem is that just because it’s happening right now, doesn’t mean it’s important.
Maybe someone liked your status update. Maybe it’s a joke text message. Or someone trying to grab dinner later.
When you let the urgent-but-unimportant things steal your attention, you multiply the time it takes to get anything meaningful done. It’s time to retrain our brains to focus on what really matters!
