Jolt! (10 page)

I'm amazed at the number of people who fail in life because they haven't examined their lives closely. They don't know what makes them motivated, depressed, angry, or tired. They don't know their limits or their stress points.

It's similar to the red line on the speedometer of your car. We all have days and sometimes weeks when we're in overdrive. But people who know their boundaries recognize when they kick into the red line, and they adjust accordingly.

They realize that within a short time, they must have a break or a vacation. But those who don't understand their boundaries and limitations live in overdrive 24/7. They live in a perpetual state of stress, working too hard at the office, juggling too many activities with the kids, or overcommitting their time and resources. And before long, they begin to break down.

Worse, they allow others to exert far too much control over their lives.

Understand your boundaries. Know your limitations.

Personal boundaries are invisible, and unless you point them out, you'll become invisible as well.

» JOLT #9
THE POWER OF FOCUS
Selective Thinking Is the Key to Breakthrough

A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course to victory.
—ARTHUR GOLDEN,
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA

Focus 90% of your time on solutions
and only 10% of your time on problems.
—ANTHONY J. D'ANGELO,
THE COLLEGE BLUE BOOK

W
e can't talk about disruption without mentioning the advertising industry. Right now, advertising and marketing are experiencing a very challenging time, and change is happening on a daily basis. I know because I'm a cofounder of a production company that produced two Super Bowl commercials in 2008. At the time, broadcasting thirty-second spots during the Super Bowl cost $2.2 million each. That doesn't even count the cost of
producing
the commercials, which can be in the $1 million-plus range for high-profile spots.

Why in the world do Super Bowl spots cost so much?
The power of focus
. When millions of people are focused with such intensity, thirty seconds is all you need to get your message across.

Major advertisers have long understood the power of focus. As a media consultant, I meet people all the time who tell me, “Television doesn't affect me. I can watch for hours and it doesn't have any impact at all.” I read recently that the average American watches more than four hours of television a night, and my experience indicates that it's not so unusual for people (especially young people) to view up to seven hours of television and computer entertainment on a daily basis!

People may think it doesn't have any impact, but most professionals like me beg to differ. Advertising agencies know that thirty-second commercials affect behavior, and they are willing to spend millions of dollars based on that belief. And if thirty seconds affects behavior, think of the impact four to seven hours a day can have.

The point? In television as in life, focus matters.

In the last ten years, “multitasking” has become all the rage. Doing multiple tasks at the same time has become the ultimate symbol of accomplishment. If you can write a book, make phone calls, keep your appointments, finalize the presentation, and solve an employee problem all at the same time, you're considered a corporate genius in today's economy.

I know, because I've become a master at multitasking. I'm sure it's connected to the fact that I've always been easily distracted, but believe me, I can juggle a lot and survive. Focusing was always a little difficult for me, so I made up for it by doing a ton of different things all at once. I could answer e-mail, make phone calls, finish a TV script, and organize my desk at the same time without even thinking about it. In fact, I could juggle at that pace for hours without a second thought.

But then I noticed some interesting research that indicated multitasking wasn't as productive as it seemed. In fact, balancing multiple tasks and juggling projects was far less successful than I thought. I learned that when people like me multitask, we make many more mistakes and often end up taking even longer to correct those mistakes.

That's when I started researching the power of focus—doing one task at a time and doing it really well. In a digital age, it doesn't seem quite as fashionable, but the more I study it, the more I learn the benefits of this little-used skill.

» FOCUS ALLOWS YOU TO TAKE CONTROL OF ALL YOUR SKILLS, INTELLIGENCE, AND RESOURCES AND PUT THEM TO WORK ON YOUR IMMEDIATE PROBLEM.

Instead of doing five tasks relatively well, or with average skill, focus allows you to turn all that energy and effort into doing one thing at the peak of your abilities. And the results can be absolutely amazing.

This very book was delayed because of my initial lack of focus. I've had this information inside me for years, but I continued to allow distractions to take me off course. Running two companies, consulting with numerous organizations, directing commercials and television programs—all pulled my attention away from the real dream of helping people through the power of change. As a result, for the longest time I would only work on the book in small snippets of time stolen away from other tasks and projects. I would either wake up early in the morning to write for a few hours, or grab a few minutes before bed. I actually wrote the last chapter on an airline flight between Atlanta and Los Angeles. As a result, I was writing as many as four different chapters at the same time. A few paragraphs here, a few there, and then I would shift to another section of the book when something else came to mind.

In this culture, where multitasking is prized above all things, I should have probably won some award for juggling my normal routine and then finding fragments of time to write a book. But I finally realized that it wasn't just my schedule that was becoming fragmented; the book was fragmented as well. As I read my rough drafts, I discovered that any sense of overall direction, theme, or sense of completeness was lacking. The book had snippets of good information but was lacking any real depth and wholeness.

So I decided to focus. I redesigned my schedule so that I could focus the time, energy, and effort on completing the book. I threw out the incomplete sections and started devoting more time (undistracted time) to the writing process. I shut the door, refused to answer the phone during certain parts of the day, and started to focus on writing.

When that happened, I noticed something amazing. The focus allowed me to go deep.

SLEEP RESEARCH AND THE POWER OF FOCUS

It was much like what researchers have discovered about REM sleep. In our sleep patterns we desperately need time in our REM sleep. It's where we dream and how we recover from the day. Scientists have discovered that skipping this most productive stage of sleep has devastating results.

Researchers have conflicting ideas about why we dream during REM sleep, but one of the theories is particularly compelling to me. Some scientists believe that dreaming allows our subconscious minds to “sort through” the experiences, thoughts, and ideas that have been floating around and helps us “connect the dots” or put them all into perspective. That would explain why our dreams mix and match various experiences—even though they make no sense on the surface. Perhaps our subconscious is trying to sort things out— putting experiences into a perspective that we would never consider with our conscious minds. The result has fascinated us since the beginning of time and spawned all kinds of dream interpretation theories, occult practices, mediums, and wacko ideas.

» SLEEP ON IT.

This research has also given credence to the old phrase “Sleep on it.” My mother (and most likely yours as well) always told me to “sleep on it” when I was wrestling with a problem, challenge, or dilemma for which I just couldn't find the answer.

Guess what? Mom may just have been right. (Just as with a million other things.)

Researchers today believe that when we have a difficult problem for which we need an answer, if we'll think on the problem right before bedtime, our subconscious minds can work it out. In
Newsweek
magazine's feature story, “What Dreams Are Made Of,” writers Barbara Kantrowitz and Karen Springen, with Pat Wingert and Josh Ulick, report evidence that dreaming helps certain types of learning:

Some researchers have found that dreaming about physical tasks, like a gymnast's floor routine, enhances performance. Dreaming can also help people find solutions to elusive problems. “Anything that is very visual may get extra help from dreams,” says Deirdre Barrett, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and editor of the journal
Dreaming
. In her book
The Committee of Sleep
, she describes how artists like Jasper Johns and Salvador Dali found inspiration in their dreams. In her own research on problem solving through dreams, Barrett has found that even ordinary people can solve simple problems in their lives (like how to fit old furniture into a new apartment) if they focus on the dilemma before they fall asleep.

One way I use dreams is by keeping a notebook on the side of the bed. I'll often wake up in the middle of the night with ideas, stories, and illustrations that help whatever challenges I happen to be facing at the time. I've discovered that if I wait until morning, I'll forget the idea, because our thinking is very delicate during dream states. It's very hard to remember the first things that come to mind after waking—especially in the middle of the night. So keep a notebook by your bed and get into the habit of writing down what comes to mind as soon as you wake up.

» WHAT DISTRACTIONS ARE KEEPING YOU FROM ACHIEVING YOUR GOALS?

Is it a personal problem, like laziness, lack of ambition, the tug of pornography, the lure of the party life, or the well-meaning disturbance of good friends who want more of your time? Or what about business distractions, like spending too much time on the Internet, talking with coworkers, the wrong office environment, poor equipment, being hypercritical of the company, or a host of other issues?

I recently worked with one client who was hyperattentive to the minutest details. Taking normal care of fine points is important, but this executive took it to the extreme. Whenever we would turn in a report or a television program, he would take enormous time to view it and send us a list of every possible error, inconsistency, or problem. I'm talking way over the top here—crooked staples in the report, minor grammar issues, a bad frame of video (keep in mind that video has thirty frames per second), or the slightest audio deviation. We produce programs of the highest quality, but in thirty years of producing, I'd never experienced anything like this guy.

Then one day he came to me exhausted and overworked. He was complaining of all the responsibilities of his job and how he desperately needed help. I shared with him the idea that he might be allowing his manic attention to details to become a distraction. Anyone spending that much time looking for microscopic problems would wear himself out. Apparently, in his extreme effort to look good to the president, he was killing himself trying to find anything that might get him noticed. But his enormous effort to find tiny issues no one else would ever see was keeping him from focusing on the most significant parts of his job.

We'll discuss distractions in more detail in a later chapter, but for now, whatever your distractions may be, begin today to fill the void with something you can positively focus on. Identify your areas of distraction and start relentlessly practicing focus.

» TAKE THE INITIATIVE TO CHANGE YOUR SITUATION.

Too many people complain and expect someone else to solve their problems. Perhaps your desk isn't right, you have a slow computer, or your office is too cramped, and you're waiting for the company to make the change.

You may not be able to afford making major changes yourself, but I would urge you to consider the steps you can take right now. Perhaps you can't afford a faster computer, but you could offer to split the cost with the company. After all, if your computer is keeping you from doing excellent work, being noticed, and getting a promotion, then what are you accomplishing by waiting? Learn to take control of your story because if you don't, someone else will.

Is your office arranged in the most productive way? Is your desk located in a place where every person who walks by your door is a distraction? Are you too open for interruptions? If you have an assistant, is he or she helping you maximize your focus?

Another key to learning focus is what I call the
field of vision
. Your field of vision is the immediate issues you face during the day—literally, what you are seeing. One of the keys to maintaining focus is to keep the things you're focusing on in your field of vision at all times. I've discovered that most people are visual learners. We live in a culture that has moved from a text-based culture to a visually based culture.

Whatever you want to focus on, keep it directly in front of you in the form of pictures, objects, or files. Keep it in your field of vision.

I have two sets of files in my office. My assistant keeps the master file in the cabinets outside her office, but I keep files for immediate projects on my desk. I can see them, think about them, and if I'm not doing something about them, those files act as a constant reminder. Our production supervisor keeps an updated list of our projects, my assistant keeps my to-do list, and they both make a practice of making sure I see those lists on a regular basis. By keeping those projects in my field of vision, it helps me eliminate anything else that may be competing for my time.

Make a list of the top five things that you feel you need to focus on right now. Once you get those projects, priorities, or issues on the list, begin to eliminate any distractions that would keep you from intense, focused concentration on accomplishing those changes in your life. Finally, keep those items in your field of vision. Keep the list on your desk, or better yet, keep physical reminders in front of you. If it's a book you need to read, keep it in your bag; if it's a project, keep the folder on your desk. Begin today practicing the power of focus and let it begin to clarify the changes and goals that will keep you on the journey toward change.