Hyperfocus

In a changed working scenario of work from home, it is time to have a closer look at all the tasks and activities that consume our time on a daily basis. This is necessary to assess whether we are focusing on important tasks or if unimportant tasks and other distractions are eating away a lot of our focus and time. Chris Bailey explains this concept in his famous book “Hyperfocus” that our activities or tasks can be mapped on two scales:

1.      Being productive

2.      Being attractive

If the output of a task contributes to an overall personal or organizational goal, then that task is to be marked on higher side on the “Being Productive” axis. On the attractiveness scale, if a task is very luring and is done willingly, then it is marked higher on “Being Attractive” axis. As an example, long office commutes are never attractive and not productive but still may be mandatory for a lot of people. Similarly, knowingly or unknowingly, if one is spending too much time on social media and surfing news websites during work, then it is high on attractiveness but very low on being productive. Off course, this is not the case for those employees whose core task is to be on social media.

Accordingly, on these two scales, we can divide four quadrants where our focus (an in turn our efforts) may lie at any given point in time:

1.      Purposeful – When an activity is high on being productive and high on attractiveness

2.      Necessary – When an activity is high on being productive but low on attractiveness.

3.      Unnecessary – When an activity is low on being productive and low on attractiveness

4.      Distraction – When an activity is low on being productive but high on attractiveness.

In the following figure, you will see these four quadrants.

The idea is to first be cognizant of how we are spending our time. There is a very famous saying :- “ You can’t correct what you can’t measure”. Therefore, all the activities that take our time need to be mapped on a scale of 1 to 10 on these two parameters. After this is done, we can also allocate what percentage of time (of the 100% time) is spent on each activity. This will give us a status on where we are focusing and whether it aligned to individual and organizational goals or not. An example is the below table and a map of the activities in the four quadrants. 

Once we have the map available, then we can easily see how much time and how many activities are distracting us from our goals and which tasks are necessary and if there is a scope to make them purposeful.   

It is advisable to carry out this activity separately for personal and professional front otherwise, the results may be too difficult to interpret and improve upon.

From an organization perspective, leadership needs to make sure maximum time is spent on purposeful quadrant because that will ensure maximum focus willingly on the activities that align with organizational goals. All other inefficiencies that are making tasks unattractive needs to be removed so that the focus remains on where it should be. Similarly, at an individual level, one needs to ensure that distraction consumes minimum percentage of focus and more activities are on the right side towards “being productive”.