In The Flow Coaching

There’s a video making the Internet rounds of a public bus ramming into the back of an SUV stopped in rush hour traffic. It’s filmed from the point of view of the bus driver – well, if the driver had been watching the road instead of texting on his phone, as revealed by the surveillance camera installed inside the bus.

No question, it’s difficult to resist the siren call of multi-tasking: “Do three things at once, get three times as much done!” But this “logic” ignores how the human mind actually functions, which is to focus on concepts sequentially, one at a time. The brain cannot, in fact, do more than one thing without drastically reducing the quality of its processing, i.e. slowing down.

Have you ever been in a phone conversation with someone when their voice trails off while they’re speaking, and they say, “Oh, sorry, just reading an email…”? That’s because brain activation for listening is cut in half if the person is trying to process visual input at the same time. A recent study at The British Institute of Psychiatry showed that checking your email while performing another creative task decreases your IQ in the moment by 10 points. That, points out Josh Waitzkin, a chess and martial arts world champion and author of The Art of Learning, is the equivalent of not sleeping for 36 hours—more than twice the impact of smoking marijuana.

Another thing: you’re not really performing multiple tasks at the same time, you’re just alternating between them. There are “switching costs” involved, says John Medina, author of Brain Rules and a molecular biologist who specializes in brain development. That is, you make three times more errors on a project when interrupted and it takes you four times longer to complete a task when interrupted (so much for getting more done).

So are you ready to give up your so-called multi-tasking? Here are some habits for relearning how to focus your attention on one thing at a time.

1. Turn it off. Is your technology a helpful servant or a Pavlovian dictator? All the alerts, ringing, buzzing, xylophoning and vibrating encourage reactive behavior, disrupting our concentration whether warranted or not. Consciously evaluate how you use technology and how you can program it to achieve focus, not distraction: shut off your phone for certain hours of the day, ignore call-waiting (yes, it’s possible!), and turn off email and text alerts.

2. Segment your day. Looking at the day ahead, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of what seemingly has to get done, which often leads to Headless Chicken Syndrome and things like trying to apply moisturizer and tie your shoes at the same time. Instead of haphazardly doing several things at once, start the conscious (there’s that word again) habit of breaking up your day into bite-size segments. Before you answer the phone, get dressed or head into a staff meeting, galvanize your attention to the task at hand by deliberately saying to yourself: “Now I am going to….” (If you’ve ever stood in the middle of a room wondering what you came in there for, this technique will help.)

3. Create laser focus. To get more done, set an ambitious time limit for each segment (I see how many kitchen tasks I can accomplish in the two minutes the microwave popcorn is popping). See if unleashing the full power of your focus on one thing at a time doesn’t translate into more speed and efficiency than diffused attention to several things does.

4. Consciously choreograph. If the very nature of your work requires continuous switching between several activities – you’re a receptionist in a medical office, for example, and you need to toggle between phones, requests from doctors and patients, and paperwork – the key is to approach it as one big task. Instead of merely reacting to external interruptions, find a logical stopping point before shifting your attention. Ask people to wait until you’ve sent your email, letting them know that it’s so you can give them your undivided attention. Likewise, pair physical with mental: tidy up the kitchen while listening to an audiobook, do your stretching exercises while watching a movie.

5. Rest and recharge. You don’t expect your cell phone battery to stay juiced without recharging. The same goes for your ability to concentrate, which will fluctuate according to your energy levels. Jim Loehr, sports psychologist and co-author of The Power of Full Engagement, says the best way to maximize energy is to “sprint” through the day. Rather than working non-stop, marathon-style, adopt the habit of taking a 15 – 30 minute break every hour and a half or two hours; taking a stroll or stretching and deep breathing if you’ve been sitting in front of the computer will strengthen your powers of concentration and ability to resist the siren call of distraction.

The most satisfying and fulfilling experiences come when we are deeply engaged in what we are doing. And yet we continue to move reactively from one activity to another, keeping our attention skittering across the surface. Our focus – where we direct it and how long we keep it there — is one of the few things under our control. Isn’t it time we stopped relinquishing it?

It’s that time of year: If procrastination had a season, no doubt it would be the months before income taxes are due. Though some people claim to work better under pressure, procrastination - resistance to taking action - is an insidious drain of psychic energy: somewhere in your mind is the awareness that you are supposed to be doing something else and, like a monkey on your back, it prevents you from focusing fully on whatever you’re actually doing.

Whether it’s making a call to an unpleasant client, writing a monthly report, or starting a diet, here are three ways to tweak your perception so you can get to the start, and finish, more quickly and efficiently.

One reason I think we’re so reluctant to get started on unpleasant stuff is because we think that once we start, that feeling of resistance is only going to get stronger each step of the way. But that’s not the case. Let’s say you have a long list of calls to make. Once you break through the inertia and make the first two or three calls, it doesn’t get cumulatively harder with each call. Instead, momentum kicks in, resistance fades and, in some cases (careful!), you may actually start to enjoy the process. Focus on breaking through the resistance to take just that first step.

2. Anticipate resistance. Some activities (like brushing your teeth) become an easy habit; others (like waking up early if you’re a night owl) don’t. Just because you do something regularly, don’t assume that it should get “easier” - you will only compound the inertia because now, in addition to the push-back of “I don’t wanna,” there is the feeling of inadequacy that, after all this time, you are still struggling with this particular resistance. Rather than expecting the resistance to go away, focus on how to break through it.

3. Get a strategy. By now you know what little tricks you use to procrastinate and resist the inevitable: hitting the snooze button, checking out celebrity picks on iTunes (uhem), cleaning out the refrigerator. Give up the fantasy that you will eventually just “feel like it” and pro-actively create a strategy that anticipates and short-circuits  resistance. Reward yourself for taking action (yes, now you can check out celebrity picks on iTunes). Set a time limit for how long you have to do something. Or pair a “pleasant thing” with an “unpleasant thing” (Grey’s Anatomy with stretching, for example, or Jolly Ranchers with filing tax returns).

Here’s a question: do you have a particular goal you’re working toward at the moment? Are you, for the most part, enjoying the training or practicing or working hard part of achieving it? If not, you need to find a different goal.

Why? Because the best part of achieving your goals is not the fleeting moment of achieving the end result. The real value of setting goals is what you have to do, and go through, to accomplish them. It’s about the process.

When your focus is on the process, you’re more likely to get into the blissful, productive state of flow. And, in turn, being in the flow will heighten your enjoyment of the process.

As Penelope Trunk says over at Brazen Careerist:

You can set a goal and then be in a state of flow every day as you try to meet that goal. When you restructure your day you get more self-discipline spread all over your day. And when you put yourself into that state of flow every day, then your body gets used to that, and you elevate your whole life to one that sort of demands that state on a regular basis.

Welcome to the virtuous cycle: Focusing on the process leads to flow, which deepens enjoyment of the process, which increases the likelihood of achieving your goal.

In the economic turbulence of recent weeks, each day drops a new bomb: historic slides in the market, unprecedented bank failures. Every other conversation seems to revolve around lay-offs, bankruptcies and pending economic disaster, intensifying the sense of anxiety and uncertainty.

All this on top of the stressful events that are already part of a typical high-pressure workweek: a client calling to say they’re pulling out of the deal on which you’ve been working long hours. An unpleasant exchange with a colleague. Or the sinking realization as you dial into a conference call with a client that you misspelled their company name in the letter you sent out late last night.
How do you prevent them from derailing your productivity and eating away at your confidence? What’s your recovery strategy?

In his book, Fight Your Fear and Win, sports psychologist Don Greene, Ph. D says: “The ability to move on – to put a poor judgment, a wrong answer, a weak moment, a physical lapse, behind you instantly – is the thing that makes winners out of the merely talented.” Whether an event was or wasn’t under your control, endless venting and rehashing are nothing but a waste of time and mental energy. Instead, here are five techniques for hitting your internal “reset” button so you can recover and move on in champion style:

1. Use your body as an anchor. When we’re “in our head,” we’re either ruminating about the past or worrying about the future. Our body, however, is always in the present – so use it to get grounded. In the aftermath of plans gone awry, stop and feel the soles of your feet on the floor, your fingertips on the computer keyboard. Then, see if you can locate where you’re feeling the impact – a tightness in your throat or chest, a gnawing in your stomach – and breathe into the sensation until it starts to subside.

2. Stick to the facts. Now, back to your head. Whenever an event triggers an emotionally charged response, our egos will hijack the facts and spin them into a dramatic story that incorporates all our negative self-talk and fears of inadequacy. First, parse out the facts in simple Dick-and-Jane language – “The deal did not go through,” or “The Dow is down” instead of “Why can’t I do anything right?” or “We’re heading for another depression.”

3. Set a time limit. Of course, separating fact from your own firmly entrenched fiction is easier said than done. Egos feed off drama and will try to convince you that, if only you go around in circles long enough, you will reach a solution. Don’t fall for that ol’ chestnut; you’re not going to “solve” an emotional response by thinking alone.

So determine a finite amount of time – ten minutes, say – to focus your attention solely on what just happened. Write some stream-of-consciousness thoughts or bullet points and then resolve to put it aside until the emotional heat has subsided.

4. Send in your inner coach. If you find yourself during the day constantly replaying a blunder or imagining a worrisome scenario, ask your inner critic if your inner coach can step in to pinch-hit for a moment. Then, speak to yourself in a kind voice, as if comforting a child, with your own version of: “You did your best,” or “This too will pass.”

5. Keep it in perspective. Yes, there will always be the office sharks waiting to pounce at the slightest sign of weakness but, in most cases, no-one is as hyper-aware of your mistake – much less the harsh soundtrack in your head – as you are. In any case, instead of fixating on what went “wrong,” your energy would be better spent recovering quickly and determining an action plan for damage control, if necessary.

The Bottom Line
What’s done is done. The only thing under your control is what you do next. As winners of every ilk know, the ability to remain poised, resilient and quickly regain their balance is a competitive edge more valuable than never dealing with mistakes or setbacks at all.