Two of the most important skills in the modern world, both at school and in your work, are
to learn new skills fast and have the ability to focus, with the former being important
because we live in an incredibly fast moving world and the latter being a skill that isn't
easily found in this fast paced and highly distracting environment.
Not only will these skills improve the quality of your work, but will directly influence
and improve your productivity.
In this video, I want to share how I have developed skills to learn fast and focus intensely,
but equally some of the science behind these critical skills and how you can develop them
yourself.
Cal Newport's Deep Work is a fantastic book that inspired this share, and I really can't
recommend it enough so please do consider checking it out.
So for me, deep work, or periods of focus on a specific task, is something that comes
naturally to me.
That's not because I always understood or knew about the benefits and value of deep
work, but rather it came as a natural inclination to seek out this kind of work, almost certainly
because I'm quite introverted by nature.
For example when young one of my favourite past times was to draw, so I'd spend long
periods of time just sketching.
Today, much of the tasks or hobbies of most interest to me are those which I do when alone
and usually have some meaning to me personally.
However, where this really comes to be valuable is how it can influence my work, as I find
I actually produce better quality work when left to my own devices without distraction.
And in a world where distraction is often overwhelming and seemingly inescapable, this
skill is invaluable.
Thing is, it wasn't always this way, as when I first started my professional career, I
actually felt obligated to compromise and tackle shallow work as part of my day.
This would be responding to emails quickly, usually immediately, or feeling like I had
to attend certain meetings which served no purpose, or even just have conversations with
people that ultimately lead to nothing.
In truth these aren't always bad things to do when starting out in a new office environment
and you need to build relationships, but fundamentally it was affecting my work and I found myself
making careless mistakes as a result.
So...I actively sought out methods to allow me to focus and improve the quality of my
work, and the first step to that was set up my environment to reduce distractions.
The first thing I did was get some earphones and listen to music while working, drowning
out other background noise.
I would like to say that silence would be preferable, but in an open office that was
simply impossible.
Sometimes, if I needed to focus I'd even book out a meeting room just so I could work alone
in a quiet space for a morning or afternoon, sometimes even the whole day.
Now that my physical environment was less of a problem, I shifted to changing my digital
environment.
First, I'd only open emails at set times in the day, usually in the morning, at lunch,
and at the end of the day.
Other than those times, my emails were closed the rest of the time.
From here, I limited the access people had to me via chat as well, as I'd either set
myself to have a status of busy, away and often even just offline.
The lack of approachability might seem negative in the first instance, but what I found was
that most people understood my reasons for it and respected my space when they knew I
wanted to focus.
In the vast majority of cases, they wouldn't disturb me while I was focused on my work
and would either email me or wait to speak to me when I didn't have my earphones in.
On that note, sometimes I'd just wear earphones without listening to anything just so I could
focus.
The amazing thing is we often feel an obligation to respond immediately to any communication
today, but the reality for most jobs is that leaving it for a few hours will NOT have any
detrimental effects.
As someone working in software development, distractions while trying to code was nothing
short of a nightmare for me, so these changes in my working habits made a massive difference.
Here's the thing, this ability to focus allowed me to improve the quality of my work, which
was more appreciated by those it impacted and meant I spent less time dealing with problems
later down the line.
Not only this, but the process meant I became a more trusted consultant and developer and
it opened up opportunities to tackle more complex customers and solutions, leading to
greater exposure in my job and opening up paths that were previously not there for me.
It's really quite simple, if I didn't focus on deep work and allowed shallow work to distract
me, I wouldn't have been able to show what I'm capable of and produce high quality and
impactful work.
It wouldn't have allowed me to get opportunities to take on more responsibility and I wouldn't
have reached any senior positions in my career.
And it's something I continue to do today, even moreso now as we live in a world where
home working is more accepted and commonly practiced than ever before.
For deep work, it's something I value more than ever!
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So why is focus so valuable and how does all of this relate to learning faster?
Well, to understand this we need to understand a little about the...
Neuroscience
The reason that focused work helps to learn skills more quickly is because of something
called Myelin, which is an insulating layer that forms around nerves.
Myelin allows electrical impulses to transmit quickly and efficiently along the nerve cells
and if myelin is damaged, these impulses slow down.
When you do deep work and focus on particular skills, you develop more myelin around the
relevant neurons, allowing the corresponding circuit to fire more efficiently.
As the saying goes, "practice makes perfect", and now you know why.
To explain it further, when you focus intensely on a specific skill, you’re forcing the
specific relevant circuit to fire over and over in isolation.
This repitition triggers cells called oligodendrocytes to begin wrapping layers of myelin around
the neurons in the circuits.
The reason I improved my skills as a developer and consultant was when I isolated myself
to focus on my work, I triggered the process of myelination to cement my ability to perform
my duties with greater efficacy and efficiency.
And by reducing my distractions, I minimised the risk of...
Attention Residue
When you move from one unfinished task to another or are distracted from a task, the
thoughts from that task or distraction can persist and intrude while performing the next
task.
This is called Attention Residue.
As you can probably guess, when this occurs it can be difficult to complete a task with
precision and efficiency, which can impact the quality of your work.
Ideally to avoid attention residue, you want to try and fully complete a task before moving
onto the next, and of course you want to remove distractions in your work environment.
I've already talked about how I remove distractions, but it's not always so easy to fully complete
one task, especially when it's a project that might take days to complete.
In this scenario, to help me minimise the effects of Attention Residue, I break down
my task into smaller sub tasks, which is what I'll look to get completed in my periods of
deep focus.
And in those times where I check emails, I try to ensure I've responded to those items
I need to, to the best of my ability and satisfaction to ensure it doesn't impact my next period
of focused effort.
So now that we understand why focus is so important in both getting high quality output
and learning skills through the process of myelination, how do we apply this in our lives?
Well, what I've found has worked for me is to break down tasks and identify whether they
are deep work or shallow work.
Any task that requires deep work, I'll schedule prolonged periods of time to complete them.
During these periods I remove all distractions that I can.
I try to work in silence or at least listen to music to minimise background noise.
I switch off emails and make myself unavailable on chat.
I also usually switch off all notifications on my phone, often not keeping my phone near
me when working.
And to minimise the risk of attention residue, I set myself realistic and achievable targets
to complete in my schedule.
All in all, this approach has had huge benefits for me and I appreciate and value those periods
when I can focus on my work.
It's played a significant role in the growth of my career and importantly, it's seen my
productive output increase significantly, as productivity can be measured by Time Spent
x Intensity = Work Accomplished.