As a business coach for financial advisors, it is not for me to tell you what to do, but it is for me to get you to think, to discern, and to make sure you are operating in your own best interest. Each of us possesses a very valuable resource that is limited and can either be squandered or invested for an exponential return. It does not come in 24-hour increments. On any day, you can be allotted one hour and maybe on a very, very good day — six hours. This rare and powerful resource is called attention. Your most valuable resource is not time; it is attention… and the attention tank starts emptying the moment we wake up.
Let’s define attention as intellect, willpower, creativity, discipline, presence, and focus. It’s that creative power and energy that has you engaged and present. Or let’s call it your “GO! Tank” when you are excited and engaged and present, and you are actually interested in getting things done and moving the ball forward as compared to passing the time and waiting for lunch or to go home. Yes it’s true, most of us are not gung ho and motivated all the time. Our give-a-shit tank can run out. I submit it’s a gauge that can vary day by day. We often berate ourselves if we are not motivated and excited every waking hour! We have been conditioned (especially those in sales or in a client-facing environment) that we are to be excited and gung ho all the time. That is simply not true. Energy and enthusiasm can and will vary on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis. You are human and that’s what humans do: we change. Our moods and energy levels will ebb and flow throughout a day, week, month, and quarter. Raise your level of awareness around your natural rhythms and, as much as possible, align with them instead of fighting against them.
When you are aware of something, you now have the possibility of adjustment and correction. If you are not aware, you cannot adjust or correct. If your vehicle did not have a fuel gauge, getting fuel becomes an arduous and risky process. A fuel gauge is a signal for your attention. A fuel gauge raises your awareness around how much you have in the tank, which allows you to adjust and correct.
My thesis is that attention is your most valuable resource and quality attention is in limited supply each day. The inquiry today is: How can we stretch the miles? How can we have more impact with our limited tank? How can we keep giving a shit longer?
A very simple productivity hack is to push back any form of random correspondence (email, vm) or input as far as possible into your day. Or in simple English, when you begin your work day — and if you are elite that means when you wake up before 6:00 a.m. — you stay away from random input. No email, no checking of voice mails or text messages, social media accounts or the news. Allow your time to be your time. Be clear on what is important to you and what is the priority for the day. What is your plan? What is most important for you to do today? Random stuff can make us busy. When we are busy, we cannot be effective because of a simple premise: to be effective, you have to discern and think. If you are busy, you do not have time to think. Real thinking takes effort, and unless your fingers are hitting a keyboard or you have applied pen to paper, you are not really thinking. Read Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman if you do not concur.
If you subject yourself to randomness, you are also subjecting yourself to someone else’s agenda. And what is the probability that their agenda aligns with yours? Now when you do not have an agenda, a plan, or a goal, you crave direction from others to make you feel productive, but it’s hollow productivity. You are being used to achieve another’s goal.
This rift came about when one of my clients asked me when they should look at email, and my response was, “Push it as far back into your day as you are comfortable with. Push randomness as far into your day as possible because randomness is someone else’s agenda. If you give attention to randomness you get more of it.”
Where can you get the best investment of your scarce resource of attention… on randomness or design? The simple act of pushing back into the day will save your prime attention to the advancement of your design and your agenda and help you give a shit more.
