Hi, my name is Ron Reich. I currently work as a consultant, helping organizations optimize their marketing. Before my work as a consultant, however, I spent two years working at a consumer rights attorney. In law school I had to learn about case law, how to “think like a lawyer” and how to construct a legal argument.
Since those days, I have utilized these skills very little. However, there is one main skill that I began harnessing in law school that has served me well in the years since: the ability to focus.
Anyone who embarks on the journey of law school (and later on studying for the bar exam) needs to study a lot. They also need to retain an incredible amount of information on dense topics often written in obscure sounding legalese.
I did not know it at the time, but in those days I was starting to master what MIT Professor and author, Cal Newport calls “deep work.” Newport defines deep work as ” as the ability to focus without distraction on cognitively demanding tasks.” He calls the ability to do deep work “the superpower of the 21st century.”
He’s right.
Currently, most knowledge workers (which includes evaluators) are so distracted with all of the different push notifications, emails, slack messages, and other interruptions they’re getting. By contrast, the evaluator who is able to tune out the distractions and work deeply will have a big advantage when it comes to excelling in their career and making a bigger impact. For example, the collection and analyzing of data activities that evaluators do classify as deep work activities. Here are three tips that will help you build your ability to work deeply.
Hot Tip 1. Build up your focus muscles gradually.
The NASA Human Factors division has found that adults can do deep focus for a maximum of 60 to 90 minutes before they need a break. Doing 90 minutes of quality, focused work at a time is quite difficult if you have not built up the mental endurance to do this consistently. Therefore, I recommend you start smaller, say with 20 or 30 minutes sessions and build from there.
Hot Tip 2. Use a timer and record the amount of time you spend in deep work per day.
The British statistician Karl Pearson is credited with saying that “what gets measured gets improved; what gets measured and recorded improves exponentially.” Since there are very few metrics that will have more impact on career success than time spent working deeply, we are wise to keep track of this. The easiest way to do this is with an old fashioned kitchen timer, a pen, and paper.
Hot Tip 3. Preempt your distraction demons (especially the smartphone).
One of the easiest ways to get better at focusing at work is to stop engaging in activities that distract you. Smartphones definitely provide the biggest distractions for most people. The most effective way to slay this distraction demon is to make the behavior harder to do. My advice: keep your phone off and in a drawer while working (or better yet, in the other room if that is possible). This may sound crazy for many people, but I can assure you it can be done.
Recap
To review, building up your ability to do quality, focused work for longer periods of time is one great way to accelerate your career and the impact you can make. Use these three tips to build your focus muscles and I promise you’ll love the results that follow.
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