How do you eat an elephant? Have you ever made a plan to do something or needed to get something done, but as time went by, you realize that you needed to learn a new skill or to put in extra effort to get it done than you had earlier anticipated? It’s that time of the year when many of us start feeling overwhelmed, with a lot going on but possibly unable to move ahead. I have a few things I wanted to have done by now. Some of which I was sure I’d have accomplished, but it seems like I have to move my target.
I was reading the book; Eat That Frog, by Brian Tracy. He points out that most of our time is taken up by non-value-adding work. The 80-20 rule, states that 80% of what you do, only accounts for 20% of your output. And 20% of what you do, accounts for a whopping 80% of your outcome. Unfortunately, the 80% are the many minor issues that come up in your day that might seem important but only account for a small percentage of your output. Things like responding to emails, filing, and similar tasks. These take up a lot of our productive time.
There’s a lot of noise around us, actively competing for our time, our minds, and our capacity to focus. From the constant bleeping of our phones with alerts, to the curiosity to research everything using google (or ChatGPT), to wanting to keep in touch with friends and family through chats and social media. We constantly want to catch up for fear of missing out, a very unfounded fear.
So you missed out on a conversation from your Whatsapp group, did that affect your bottom line or your happiness index? Or did it affect the price of bread?
Going a few hours without internet now almost feels like a great inconvenience. In the book Deep Work, by Carl Newport, the writer points out that having information at our fingertips has greatly reduced our ability for deep work. Carl Newport argues that this is the source of our lack of ability to do deep work. Our short attention spans have restricted us from doing shallow work since nobody wants to sit down and focus on deep work. Deep work requires chunks of uninterrupted time each day. Most high achievers and performers speak about how they’re able to do their best work early in the morning before everyone else wakes up. This is deep work.
I’ve tried, really, I have. I just can’t seem to find a bone in me that wants me to wake up early to focus on deep work. I’m working on it though, at my own pace, and perhaps one day I shall succeed (or not 
).
I know that there are many like me, who are not morning people, does it mean that we’ll never be able to do deep work? About a year ago, I had to undertake an online class with some members of the senior management team, and we needed to focus for about 2hrs each day. At the end of each session, there was a test that was given to participants that required a passing mark. After struggling to follow the online class at first, I decided to start by switching off the internet on my phone, closing emails, and keeping off any potential interrupters. This sufficiently enabled me to concentrate and even put in an extra hour of focused work after the training, before I allowed other distractions to get in the way. I felt very productive!
Carl Newport talks of disconnecting from distractions to focus on deep work for chunks of time each day. You’ll need to find your most productive time of the day, and purpose to do deep work and focus on the 20% of work that will deliver 80% of your outcome. That’s something that I should capitalize on to get things done.
I trust you’ve heard of the phrase ‘being in a state of flow’. This is where you’re so engrossed in the work at hand that ideas start flowing seamlessly, including solutions to issues that were seemingly difficult to overcome. I think that’s a state we’d all like to be in. The state of doing deep work is a seamless way of getting into a state of flow. It’s in this state that great ideas are borne, great solutions are discovered, and great books are written.
My mind has been on overdrive lately, and much as I thought I’d started effectively mastering the art of mindfulness to calm my mind down into focusing and even into better sleep habits, I have been, of late, struggling to keep asleep. Perhaps this is due to several projects I have pending and are yet to reach where I thought they’d have reached by now. I need to re-focus and get on with setting my 80-20 rules right once again and get to do some deep work towards that end.
If you’re like me currently, what are you going to do to get yourself back on track? It’s never in the knowing what to do, but in the doing, that you make any real progress in life.
Let’s eat that elephant!
