Do you ever stop to think about… what you’re thinking about?

What do you think most of your thoughts concern:  Yourself?  Others?  An ever-alternating mix of the two?

Our minds are like little machines that never stop running.  So we get used to the continual purring of the motor, virtually NEVER even realizing what it’s producing… or considering that we can affect the product. 

So I’ll ask you to consider this:  How much of your thought do you think is centered on control? 

And how much of that thought has to do with controlling others? 

Controlling others. 

Hold on—it’s not as sinister as it sounds:

-We want them to do something…

-We wish they hadn’t done something.  Or hadn’t said something…

-We hope they’ll make the decision we want them to make.  The list could go on.

Most of this thought, of course, is useless.  While thoughts of controlling the actions of others may consume a lot of our (unintentional) mental energy, the reality is that our control over them is usually pretty limited.

So while we’re spending all that time thinking about the decisions and actions of others, and how we’d like them to be different, we entirely ignore addressing the person we can control:  Ourself. 

In my last post of 2011 I wrote that all outcomes arrive at our feet through this simple, inarguable formula:  Thought, Decision, and Action.

Since everything we get in life—that we have a say in, anyway—begins with thought, wouldn’t it be smart to exercise maximum control over it?  Put another way, could it actually be detrimental NOT to control our thoughts?  Yes.   

The most elemental way to control our thoughts is simply through an awareness that at any given moment we’re navigating in one of two modes: 

1-Focus

or…

2-Distraction

If I’m focusing on a football game, I’m distracted from mowing the lawn.

If I’m focused on emails, I’m distracted from the project I need to finish.

If I’m focused on a problem, I’m may actually be distracted from its simple solution… or that it doesn’t have one.

How this relates to Time Management:  Despite all its myriad remedies, the real source of Time Management problems  goes back to the simple issue of Focus vs. Distraction.  We’re losing productivity simply because we’re in a state of focus on the ‘wrong’ thing… and distracted from the ‘right’ thing.

Way back in 2009 I wrote about the Myth of Multitasking.  Contrary to popular belief, multitasking is a losing proposition.  Why?  Because we’re focused and distracted at the same time!   By definition, spreading our attention over several subjects is:  Distraction. 

How Focus & Distraction relate to deception and conversational results:  In a typical conversation we tend to focus primarily on our own thoughts, while giving little attention to what’s being said:

-We’re offended at the words of the other person…

-We think they’re wrong…

-We’re thinking of what we’re going to say next (THE biggest distractor of all from what’s being said to us)

Deception is easy to pull off because…

1-The average person doesn’t know the true methods for spotting it, and

2-The average person doesn’t LISTEN. 

This second point is the most critical of the two; even a person who has limited knowledge of how to tell when someone is lying will still pick up on the more obvious signs… if he’ll just stifle the internal noise in his head and listen intently to the other person. 

So whether you want to be more productive with your time, or you’re interested in spotting deception when it comes your way, focus is THE prerequisite.

How to master Focus and Distraction:  Notice what you’re thinking about. 

Without even realizing it, are you falling prey to distraction… by allowing yourself to focus on something that doesn’t matter? 

Now that you’ve given this idea some thought, would agree that nearly all your results depend on this simple question, one that you can ask yourself in any moment of your day:  Am I focused… or distracted?

-jef

Refer this blog post to a friend or colleague…

Tags: distraction

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 19th, 2012 at 5:08 pm and is filed under Thought. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.