Attention management over time management!

We hear a lot about time management. The experts say time management is important for your productively and sanity. Various tools and systems are offered to help prioritize and track your tasks and projects. When you better manage your time, you'll be able to complete your tasks on time and you're more productive in a more sustainable manner. This is all great. However, I believe more important than time management is "attention management".

How many times have you told yourself you were going to do something at 10am. You start it at 10am, but 10 minutes later a more pressing email comes through (ding!) and you think you need to answer it. You're then mesmerized by your inbox full of other emails; so might as well answer those since you already opened Outlook. One email leads to another and then you hear another ding for your next meeting in 15 minutes @ 11am. So you may as well press on with more e-mails. At the end of the day you wonder - where did the time go? What happened to what I needed to do at 10am? Well, it has to be postponed to another day...

Sound familiar? You had good intentions of managing your time, it was blocked in your calendar, but not managing your attention ruined it. We do this a lot, and yet don’t seem to learn from it. The only way to get better is mastering your attention. And like anything it needs practice. E-mail is a particular addiction…. and a wonderful tool for other people’s priorities.

Intentionally remove distractions from your environment, particularly technology distractions. Quit Outlook/email. Silence notifications. Put your phone in airplane mode. Give your team a heads up that you won't be available for the next hour or 2.

If you're not a surgeon and don't work in an emergency room or hospital then I assure you that nobody dies because you're not available. What works for me is to put my phone in airplane mode, put it behind me or sometimes in another room so it's not in sight. I know that I'll get tempted and turn off airplane mode if that pesky phone is in reach.

Take some time to be aware of how you get distracted and work towards removing these, even for a couple of hours in your day. Start small and you’ll find it adds up. You'll use your time far more intentionally, and get much more done and feel less overwhelmed.