One Reason People Fail

Have you ever noticed that when you are with family and friend
all that you can ever think about is work? Or maybe you have
noticed that when you are at work all you can ever think about is
your family and friends? Or maybe you've realised that when you are
doing anything, all your thinking about is doing something else?

This phenomenon is what Tony Schwartz calls "The Grey Zone". The
grey zone is an analogy for your attention and it's something that
we all experience. Your playing with your kids and your thinking
about building your business. Your working on a project and your
thinking about whether to go the gym or not. You're never present
and you find it impossible to focus on one thing at a time.

When you multitask you will often find yourself stuck in the grey
zone. You're doing four different things at once - surfing the web,
sending emails, chatting on skype, and eating your dinner. Hours
later you wonder where all the time is gone and how you never
seem to get anything done.

Being in the grey zone means that you constantly under-preform.
When your attention is spread across multiple tasks at the same
time you're are always going to fall short. You're always stopping
and starting and you can never give anything 100% of your attention.

Getting out of the grey zone is about managing your attention
and focus. Instead of doing multiple things at once, you pick
one thing and then you do it. You schedule a period of uninterrupted
time and then you focus your entire attention on completing that
project.

Doing this actually allows you to disconnect from this project.
When you do many things at once and leave them unfinished, you
can never truly disconnect. You've got too many things on your
plate and you've got too many things to think about. You're stuck
in the grey zone.

You're always going to be stuck there unless you can learn to focus
on on one thing at a time. This is something that you need to train
and something that you need to plan for.

Planning means that you prioritise what is important, and then you
plan specific periods where you can work on your priorities.
Planning also means that you can forget about certain things until
it's time to get to them. The fact that you have planned to get to
them later means that you can give yourself permission to forget
about them for now.

This is what frees up your attention. When you don't need to
remember what you need to do later, you can focus on what you
are doing NOW. This focus is what enables you to be more productive
and then to disconnect from the activity when you are finished.

Multitasking can be useful at times, but real productivity comes
by getting out of the grey zone. And this means being able to
focus and attend to one thing at a time.

After I started to learn how to focus my time and break it down
into the 'important chunks' my productivity went through the roof!

So wise up, grab a bit of paper right now and start recognising

the areas in your life when you are in the grey zone so we can then

begin to structure our time and become far more productive.

And don't forget - have more enjoyable experiences when we do things :-)

Author: Conor Hughes