businessJan 26, 202455:48pending

Core Four: The Four Disciplines of Attention Management - DBR 015

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

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About this episode

Think about attention management. About how we deal with our own ability to focus. That attention is primarily directed at the work we have to do. We need our full attention on our work, at least to the degree that our work is difficult and challenging.

One of my clients asked me to organize from the big picture perspective, what we're trying to do with our attention. What are the big rocks of dealing with our attention effectively.

Attention = ability to focus

There are four pieces, more detail below

The first piece – Defend your atteniton
The second piece - Manage your attention
The third piece – Grow your attention
The fourth piece – Audit your attention

Four parts in place mean that we're really good at this Attention thing

First rock - Defend our attention

The field is not level
The three enemies to defense – the three attackers – waste, interruption, and distraction
The first enemy - Waste is those things that have crept into our lives as, now, habits

Nobody is doing this to us, we're doing it to ourselves (lack of focus?)
We can easily lose ourselves
Rabbit trails
Waste from apps

The second enemy – Theft of our attention through interruption

We lose our train of thought, our place
We actually handle this pretty well in most circumstances

The third enemy – Distraction = self-interruption

Ideas and reminders pop up at the wrong time
We combat this one by getting stuff out of our heads

Defending against three primary things

Attention Compass covers all three areas
Get started now – save your attention

Second rock – Manage our attention

There's a positive, offensive, "put your attention here" and a negative, defensive, "take things out of your awareness"
Don't want it to bother you? You're on defense. Capture it.

We empty our brains to avoid this kind of distraction
Eject it from your mind into the outside world and convince your brain that its OK
We're not just throwing it off our desk, that's when we get to offense

Don't want to lose it or hunt for it? You're on offense. Put it where you'll trip over it

The Attention Compass as a 'room of requirement' or 'magic bag of holding'
The positive – it's where you would naturally look for it
Might have to get inventive on this stuff – laundry basket
Reminders, used properly

Two sides of the same coin

Both of these things are core work and they work together
These two rest on the first one – not worth it if you're just frittering attention away
Also, these two are where the toolset is critical
Summary – get it out and put it where you'll trip over it

Attention Compass was developed specifically with this use case in mind

Third rock - Extending our attention

Define extending our attention

First metaphor – physical strength – duration of strength and intensity of strength
Second metaphor – source of light – length is battery or bulb life
Source of light – second is intensity – tight beam