What makes a high performer? Why do some people achieve greatness and
others get left floundering behind. Psychologists have determined that the
ability to get into FLOW is one of the most important aspects of high
performance. FLOW is also know as being “In the Zone”, it is a state where
everything seems easy, you are very efficient, there is zero stress and you
feel invigorated after it.
When I was working with elite athletes at the AIS and in America, special
forces soldiers, some high profile people in the entertainment industry and
more recently with high performers in corporate organizations, I noticed that
these high performers regularly go into this FLOW state.
So how do we get more of it? The good news is that it is not all about talent,
ability and potential, it’s more to do with how people execute on a daily basis.
One of the most important principles that help you get into FLOW is the ability
to focus deeply on the tasks that you perform. When you are deeply focused
you have a greater chance of slipping into FLOW.
However as a society we are losing our ability to focus. It seems like the
whole world has ADHD. There are three main reasons for this.
1. Attention deficit habit (ADH). ADH is a condition where the habits in our day
are sapping our ability to focus. For example most people leave their email
open and every time it alerts us to a new email we stop what we are doing
and we go off and check it. Also we leave our phone on constantly during the
day even when we are writing a report or meeting with someone. These
habits actually set ourselves up to be distracted and train us to have poor
focus.
2. Information Obesity – This is the result of shifting from a physical economy
to a digital economy. We are overloaded with information and we have so
much information coming at us we don’t have to focus on one thing for too
long before something else will come and take our attention away. A recent
report released by Proud Foot consulting said that information overload was
responsible for a 10% decrease in productivity.
3. Multi-tasking -
The greatest enemy of focus is this idea of multitasking, multitasking suggests
that you can focus on many things at once. Reality is multi tasking is a very
inefficient process and in reality all you are doing is focusing poorly on a
number of tasks rather than focusing well on one thing.
So what is the solution how do we improve our focus? Well there are three
simple techniques we can use to have the focus of a high performer.
1. Control Your Environment. Set up your external world to support focus,
turn off the email, turn the phone off, and educate your staff on when you are
not to be interrupted. Push back on the environment, don’t be a slave to your
environment.
2. Formal Practice. An example of a formal practice is meditation. Years ago
I thought that meditation was tree hugging, hippie stuff, however a huge
amount of evidence shows that meditation has a beneficial impact on our
cognitive ability. In its purest form meditation is about calming the mind and
focusing on one task, this ability will translate into work.
3. Be Present. During the day practice focusing your attention on what
ever is in front of you. Lose yourself in what ever you are doing. If you are
writing a report focus entirely on that report without thinking of the other
things you need to do later in the day. Likewise if you are having a
conversation with someone totally immerse yourself in that conversation
don’t let your mind drift. So often we have conversations and we are not
really present. Business is built on relationships, the greatest complement
you can give another person is your undivided attention. However we all
have a highly tuned BS detector, and we know when people are not truly
engaged with us. Some people believe that being present is the key to
team building. Companies spend millions of dollars a year getting people
to build better relationships within an organization. They usually spend this
money on personality profiling, isn’t the first step getting them to engage
and be present with each other? In addition some psychologist are now
talking about the concept that people are creating fewer and fewer
memories. The reason for this is that memories are created in the present
and the fact that most people are either obsessing about the past or
worrying about the future means that they are not laying down current
memories. How sad!
This is the first step towards high performance. Go forth and focus!!!
I was recently in a meeting with a learning and development officer of a large recruitment firm, who has a reputation for being a high performer in the industry and someone who is very productive. She had seen me speak at a conference and wanted me to work with their organization on three levels.