“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four-hour days.” ~ Zig Ziglar
Is Your Lack of Focus Ruining Your Performance?
I will cover three questions in this article to help you understand how your lack of focus is ruining your performance. They are the following:
- What is focus?
- Why is my focus so bad?
- Who can I see to solve my focus problem?
What is Focus?
Focus is the ability to zero in on a task and work without interruption for an extended time. Zooming out, the ability to subtract activity is also suitable for better strategic activity.
Focus is about concentration. Your goal should not be better time management but focus management.
The ability to apply focus to strategic work that matters is sometimes called “working in the flow” or “the zone.”
The zone is a time when you work and feel your best. Research by consulting firm McKinsey suggests the average knowledge worker in the U.S. gets only one hour of flow in a month!
If you could learn the harness flow, McKinsey research suggests you would be 500% more productive, learn 490% faster, and improve problem-solving skills by 430%.
What would that mean to your day and career? Flow is a massive opportunity for competitive advantage.
Why is My Focus So Bad?
Cultural expectations about always being available and “on,” as well as collapsed response times on any communication, cause everyone to feel time-starved.
Always being on and available forms habits that lead to an addiction to distraction, which prevents quality time at work and learning.
Email, texts, and social media all draw us into their addicting apps, preventing us from applying focused attention to our work and creating this ever-present time crunch.
The result of chronic stress, poor health, workplace burnout, time starvation, and distraction produces superficial, average, or low-value work output. This kind of work is characterized by repetitive work you can do while distracted: Writing an email, reading a report, or texting a colleague.
There is good news: You can change.
There is a path to thriving in our distracted culture by regaining your ability to concentrate and focus. Cal Newport, Georgetown University professor and author of the book Deep Work, says, “Our work culture’s shift toward the shallow is exposing a massive economic and personal opportunity for the few who recognize the potential of resisting this trend and prioritizing depth.”
To adapt to the accelerating rate of change looming, you need to produce high-value, elite-level work output — work of the quality that another person or business is willing to pay for; work not easily replicated by a machine.
Clients and employers are willing to pay for value-additive, quality output work that requires deep concentration and focus for extended periods. It also requires you to learn, overcome struggles, push your skills to the limit, and have breakthroughs that yield value.
This kind of output, which is uniquely human, is tough to replace with a machine.
Professor Newport suggests in his book that if you’re going to thrive in an era of exponential change, you will need to develop a couple of core skills:
- An ability to learn new, complex information and develop new skills quickly to adapt.
- Perform at an elite level – consistently generating new, high-quality output at speed.
Based on Americans’ poor health, inability to manage stress, record levels of burnout, and distraction and time-starvation created by technology, the vast majority are unprepared to adapt to exponential technological change and its consequences.
The ability to adapt to exponential change by developing the core skills of fast learning and elite performance requires three things:
- Optimizing your physiology
- Optimizing your psychology
- Maximizing focus time
Who Can I See for My Focus Problem?
A peak performance psychologist can help you sort through the causes of your lack of focus so you can go to work, possibly eliminating the sources, which can range from mindset, habits, and behavior patterns.
A neuropsychologist can run a full neuro psyche assessment to find potential sources of focus problems leading to a distracted or tired brain.
Your primary care doctor is also an excellent place to start. They will ask you a series of questions to help you understand if there is a physiological solution to consider. Your primary care doctor can also refer you to a psychologist in your area if they determine that route is best for you.
Seeing a functional medicine doctor can be an excellent choice. The reason why is their approach to medicine is holistic, root cause rather than looking immediately for a prescription drug to treat the problem. Getting to the source may include numerous physiological imbalances contributing to poor brain health and performance.
A Solution to Your Focus Problem
Tiger Medical Institute is a root-cause, functional medicine clinic with deep expertise in peak performance training, including training clients on how to live a high-flow lifestyle. At Tiger Medical Institute, we utilize multiple strategies to help our clients learn to master the ability to work in a deep, concentrated state of flow.
Our physicians will evaluate physical imbalances contributing to your focus and concentration issues via extensive testing and a SPECT brain scan. Our health coaches will train you in specific techniques you can use daily to work in a flow state.
Finally, we have books and an online course on harnessing the power of flow to become a peak performer.
In time, as you work on the physiological imbalances, employ stress elimination techniques, and engineer your life for better focus, you can make fantastic productivity gains.
Next Steps
An excellent next step is to visit our learning center and read these related articles:
After you’ve learned more, consider booking a call with one of our professionals at Tiger Medical Institute. In this call, we focus on you.
We want to understand your current state of health, what you’ve tried in the past, and what you feel your current state of health is costing you. We also determine if what we do is a good fit for you.
If, and only if, there is a fit and you want to learn more, do we then progress to presenting our comprehensive program to you. We allow you to decide if it is a good fit for you to move forward with us.
To talk to one of our professionals, click here to schedule your call!
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