Manage Your Attention, Not Time
“I’m too busy!” “I do not have enough time!” “If only there were more hours of the day.” It’s strange that feeling overwhelmed and busy rarely coincides with doing a lot of things. Maybe the problem is not that you don’t have enough time. The thing is, you lack attention.
In Quartz, Srinivas Rao writes that managing attention is indeed the key to achieving a goal. If you control your attention, your time management will become much easier.
Attention management is about more than just not looking at social media every five minutes, although it’s the same thing. It’s also about prioritizing and focusing your attention where it matters. And what often matters is the “deep work”.
Rao divides activities into “deep work” and “shallow work”. Both attract attention, but affect your state of mind in different ways. Paradoxically, deep work that requires a significant investment of attention is less tiring on your sense of focus, so it doesn’t tire you out before you can do your job.
On the other hand, shallow work that seems so low-cost – such temporary checks as looking at your phone, for example, how I just stopped writing here to look on Twitter, with the familiar command + tab – only distracts.
Attention management is about not scattering your attention too much. By focusing it, by narrowing its volume, you are concentrating your mental energy in one place (or at least in fewer places). And that – not time management – is what gives you productivity.
As Rao writes, “Productivity is not the amount of time you spend on something. It’s about the quality of the time you spend on something. ” So isn’t that great news? So you have a lot of time.
Learn to Manage Your Attention and Time Management Will Take Care of Itself | Quartz