Attention is all you need – as a human

In today's notification-saturated world, your attention is under constant assault. 😱

But what if I told you that you have the power to take control? 💪

One on of the most important job skills I learned over time is to manage my attention. Sounds simple, but it’s hard to do consistently. Learning to control and focus my attention helped me get so many more things done, so much faster, and with so much better quality.

Managing your attention is a super-power, and quite frankly, I’m not perfect and never done improving on this.

Anyway, here are seven tips I use daily that can help you manage your own attention so you can take back control of your limited mental energy:

1. Have a plan. 🗺️ Decide up front what you want to accomplish during the day. This is not about your typical, endless to-do-list: make a separate list of no more than three top things that you absolutely want to accomplish today, and keep it in front of you, all the time.
2. Pick one of these top things for your current day: 🧭 This is your Most Important Task to prioritize at all cost.
3. Start working on your Most Important Task first thing in the morning ⛳️, before your first meeting and before opening up any other app.
4. Avoid checking emails. 😬 At least in the morning, until you’ve made good progress on your Most Important Task. You can check emails and other distracting apps during low-energy times, like after lunch, during breaks, or on commutes.
5. Turn off all notifications on your computer. ❌ This goes especially for those dreaded “you’ve got mail!” pings. They’re the worst.
6. Turn off all notifications on your phone, too. ❌ Most apps on your phone have been optimized by very smart people towards capturing your attention away from what’s important to you. Your only defense: turn off notifications.
7. Ok, ok, let’s be realistic: 😅 But be very deliberate on any exceptions here. Only leave notifications on for the most critical things. For me, these are calls and texts from family (so I’m there for emergencies), notifications from my calendar and meeting apps (so I’m on time for meetings), and the reminders app (where I can control and set up important reminders of my own). That’s it.

Your goal is to guard your limited mental energy by controlling where you direct your attention to. Don’t let others take your attention away.

There’s a reason someone came up with the term “attention economy”: Your attention is one of your most valuable goods you have and if you can learn to manage it rather than have it managed by others, you can use it to spend your limited mental energy on work that you choose to do and that helps you reach your goals – instead of letting vampire mobile apps suck it out of you.

So pick one or more of the items above now and start claiming back your attention right away!

This is also true for LinkedIn. In the words of German’s child show star Peter Lustig (“Löwenzahn”), who famously told kids at the end of each show to turn off their TVs and go play outside:

“Abschalten.” 📺

…and when you’re back, because you got your Most Important Task done and want to enjoy some brief downtime on LinkedIn, why not share your own tips and tricks for managing your attention and take control over your mental energy?

How do you manage to stay on top of things? How do you keep those attention-thieves at bay? 🤔

#Productivity #Focus #MentalHealth

Edit: The child show star who encouraged kids to switch off their TVs was actually Peter Lustig, from the children’s show "Löwenzahn" (not Armin Maiwald from "Die Sendung mit der Maus" which is the other pinnacle of German educational children entertainment). Looks like my childhood is now so far away, my memory starts to hallucinate… Thanks to Jörg Wöhrle for pointing this out!