In the professional environment of today, there are so many things we have competing for our attention. Most of us have a computer in front of us with, sometimes, multiple screens. There are multiple applications running on the computer. While you have focus on one, pieces of all of the others are scattered about on your desktop ready to give you a “notification” at anytime to steal you away. Then there is your mobile phone with all of its applications with similar notifications. Perhaps there might even be a few human beings nearby with whom you may be having a meeting. More commonly, the human beings with whom you are meeting are in dispersed locations and connected only by the audio of a telephone, or VOIP computer application. You can hear everyone, but they can only hear you when you turn off your microphone’s mute feature. Nobody can see anybody because people prefer to keep their computer camera turned off. With all of these distractions and the disguise of many miles, it should be no surprise: people are not paying full attention to the meeting they are currently attending!
My challenge to you is simple. Pay attention!
There have been many articles written that support the fact that human-beings can only focus on one thing at a time. Sure, we all “multi-task” but that is really just switching your focus often between different items. You are never truly working on more than one item at a time. AND there is scientific proof that switching context too often is very inefficient and causes all of the tasks you are working on collectively to take more time.
Besides the science behind this, think about how not listening completely to a conversation makes you feel. Someone will call your name in a conference call. You have to unmute your phone then respond. Do you fully know the question and the background behind the question? If not, you will not feel confident in your answer, nor your contribution to the conversation. If you ask the person directing the conversation your way to repeat their question, that indicates to everyone that you were not listening. Another nail in the coffin of your confidence.
How do you feel when you are in a conversation and others are not listening to you? You may feel that the other person does not regard you as important. Or in reverse, perhaps you will think less of them and regard them as an ineffective individual because they cannot simply sit and listen to a conversation without being distracted.
Also, as one other point of support for this, part of SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) principle #6 says, “Limit Work in Progress”. While SAFe applies this to project tasks, the drive behind it is similar. You will get more done with higher quality if you limit your attention to less items simultaneously.
I will admit that I have been guilty of multi-tasking and not listening in meetings. (If you are someone who works with me that also does this and feels I am calling you out... well, I am to some degree, but I'm also calling myself out on the issue.) I try, however, to not do this. Here are a few tactics that work well.
- If you are invited to a meeting where you feel you will gain nothing or offer nothing to the meeting, decline the meeting! If you go, you will likely feel you are wasting your time while you are in the meeting, and you will multi-task. (Especially if you are remote, and nobody can see you.)
- Maintain a constant list of priorities. When you are working on one of those priorities, be it a meeting or task, be sure to stay focused on just that activity until it is complete. I will often do this by highlighting the item in my to-do list while I work on it, so in my mind, I know I am doing this and only this until I am done.
- Hide or close your email, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and any other passive communication tools. (In the not-too-distant past, this would have just said “email”.) Also, suppress notifications from those tools.
- Set auto-responders on your active communication channels letting people know you are not available to respond. Give them one method by which they can contact you. That method should be something that requires some work on their part and is not an often-travelled path to get to you. Perhaps a text (if you have not gotten to the point where texts are out of control yet) or a phone call.
- Deliberately “step away” for anything you need to do during a task or meeting that will steal your full attention. If you are on a call, say “I have to step away for a moment. I will let you know as soon as I return.” Or even say that to yourself if you are working on a task and need to go do something else for a few moments.
If the above items do not appeal to you, come up with your own tactic to stay focused. Listening, focusing on one thing at a time, and not multi-tasking will actually benefit you in the way you probably think multi-tasking should benefit you now. You will get more done, you will know more, and you will be more confident in your actions and decisions!
