Do You Focus? Or Are You Distracted?

Never before in the history of modern thinking has the lure away from focus on a specific item been more challenging. More importantly never before has the ability to focus on a specific item been more important.

It is more than technology. Let’s address technology first to get that big single item off the table…cell phone, smart phone, tablet, laptop, voicemail, texting, email, social media of all flavors from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Linkedin, YouTube and more.

The majority of the population is tied to their electronics. It is as if everyone must be available to everyone else all of the time or their world would come crashing down.

Take The Challenge. Buy an old school little memo pad and grab a bic pen. Write the day of the week at the top of the page each new day. Use tally marks each day for a week to record every time you either read an email or a text and send an email or a text. At the end of the week add up the tally marks for each day and then the week. What is the weekly number for all of the emails and texts you sent and opened?

Do this again for the next week and add one new element. Circle the tally mark if the email or the text resulted in achieving any one of your personal or business goals. When you finish the week and total your tally marks, total the circled tally marks in their own category.

How many circled tally marks are there. None? A few? What percentage of the whole?

This is the issue. We have become distracted in our behavior. We each need to have personal and business goals. These goals need to be tied to action steps which are defined with specific actions to be taken by a specific date. Without a process such as this basic process described we end up distracted. We think we are busy. We think the small things such as answering every text or email immediately really matter. Yes the small things matter. The small things that matter are the small action steps toward achieving your designed personal and business goals.

The resulting behavior from this described daily ritual the majority of people go through has created a short attention span to any focus for a length of time necessary to establish real thinking and engagement in any one single item of focus. This is rapidly becoming a lost ability in a human being. The media is aware of this and contributes to reinforcement of the behavior.

Take a look around the next time you are in a restaurant. Notice how many couples are sitting across the table from each other and are not speaking with each other or having a conversation. They are each using their smart phones checking newsfeeds or social media or email or texting. What happened to focusing on their relationship and each other?

Mitch Tublin is an advanced certified personal and business coach who resides in Stamford, CT.

Do you live in Fairfield County, CT. or Westchester County, NY? Check out L2:Learn-Lead Stamford – http://www.mitchtublin.com/L2Stamford