In an increasingly pertinent book, The Art of Concentration, health writer Harriet Griffey argues that we are experiencing an attention crisis. Office workers are interrupted every three minutes, so at best we have a three-minute attention span, and 62% of us are addicted to email. Meanwhile, a recent study at the University of California calculated that we are bombarded with 34 gigabytes of information a day, including roughly 100,000 words (a figure that has more than doubled in the past 30 years)

Should we all go on an information diet?

Griffey says we can all concentrate well and do the job once. Concentration leads to success. We’d leave work earlier. We’d also get more out of food, music, people, everything. But avoidance, negative thinking and digital dependence are formed habits, so stopping those takes discipline.

Information dieters report feeling as refreshed as after a two-week holiday. IBM, Deloitte and Intel are implementing “technology quarantines” — no-email days, no-computer days even — and with positive results: improved relations and greater productivity.

It’s time to start paying attention to paying attention.

What you can do:

• Isolate Yourself – Become a hermit and stay away from other people if you want to get work done. Unless your work is based on other people they will only break your focus. Create a private space and refuse to talk to anyone until your work is finished. Put a sign up to steer people away and don’t answer your phone.
• Cut Off the Noise – It may be obvious that distractions aren’t helping your focus, but do you actually cut them out? Getting into a state of concentration can take at least fifteen minutes. If you are getting distracted every five, you can’t possibly focus entirely on your work. Answer your e-mails at scheduled times. Request that people don’t interrupt you when working on a big project. If you are required to answer phones immediately, schedule work when the office is less busy.
• Push yourself – Read for five more minutes, write for five more minutes or learn five more things before getting distracted.
• Relax constructively: games, sports and hobbies are good; television is not. Twenty-minute naps refresh the brain.
• Clarify Objectives – Know what your goal is clearly before you start. If you aren’t sure what the end result is, the confusion will make it impossible to focus. Before I write any articles, I define the main focus of the article and get a brief mental picture of the structure. Unclear objectives often result in having to redo sections of work.
• Set a Deadline – An appropriate deadline can make it easier to forget the non-essential and speed up your working time. If you give yourself only an hour to design a logo, you will keep it simple and avoid fiddling with extravagant designs. A tight deadline can save you if you are worried about procrastinating.

If you or your people are interested in improving your skills in this topic you may find our Time & Priority Management course useful. Click here to find out more.