Get Smart!: How to Think and Act Like the Most Successful and Highest-Paid People in Every Field
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- The Attraction of Distraction
| Unlock Your Creative Powers There are three keys to unlocking your creative powers that we have spoken about before. They are clarity, focus, and concentration. First, you must be clear about the goal but flexible about the process of achieving it. Keep an open mind. Be willing to consider a variety of different ways to achieve the same result. Second, focus. Bring all of your brainpower, and that of others, to focus like a laser beam on a single problem, obstacle, or difficulty, without diversion or distraction. Stay on one subject at a time. Third, concentration. Put aside everything else, and concentrate percent until you have solved your biggest problem or achieved your most important goal. Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, tells the story of the fox and the hedgehog, which comes from an essay by Isaiah Berlin. He says that the fox is very clever and knows many things. But the hedgehog is more successful because he knows one big thing. Clarity, focus, and concentration enable you to bring all your mental powers to bear on solving one big problem or achieving one big goal. The Attraction of Distraction In our modern world of computers and email, perhaps the greatest enemy is the attraction of distraction chasing after the shiny objects of immediate stimulus—e-mail, text messages, phone calls, and social media —all of which cause your mind to scatter and disrupt your ability to focus and concentrate. According to USA Today, continuously responding to electronic interruptions, especially email and text messages, burns up your brain fuel, glucose, at a rapid rate. The average adult checks his or her email all daylong and is constantly distracted, like an attention deficit disorder dog, by signals and alarms on email and smartphones. As a result, the average e-mail-addicted employee loses ten full IQ points each day, becoming dumber by the hour. By the end of the day, many people are burned out, unable to concentrate or make even the simplest of decisions. And they are further and further behind on their key tasks. |