Ask-A-Career-Coach: How to Stop Looking for Balance and Start Finding Your Focus

Contributed by executive coach Ann Daly PhD

The way the media goes on about women “finding balance,” you’d think that Balance is a town in upstate New York. Just program it into your GPS and life will be perfect!

As if.

I hear it from my coaching clients every day: the workplace is more competitive than ever, and there is no reprieve in sight. These smart, ambitious women tell me: “I am required to deliver more and more, faster and faster, at both home and work. I feel pulled in every direction and never feel I’m doing anything well.” And that, dear reader, is the perfect formula for personal burnout and professional stagnation.

There is no such thing as “balance.” (And BTW, Prince Charming isn’t going to show up to save the day, either.) If you want to feel less stressed out and scattered, then you have to choose to harness and shape your energy. Let go of the female ego: trying to do it all, and doing it all perfectly. Instead, you have to focus, focus, focus.

That means committing to being present in every moment, wherever you are. That means being ruthless about your priorities. That means taking responsibility for how and where you direct your attention. Because more than ever, attention is the most precious gift we have to offer. Don’t squander it.

So, how do you find your focus?

First of all, you give up the myth of multi-tasking. Thanks to twenty-first-century neuroscience, we know a lot more now about how the brain works. And the research shows that there is no such thing as “multi-tasking.” Our brain does not conduct its activities simultaneously. It works sequentially. When we think we’re multi-tasking, we’re actually zigzagging and backtracking between different tasks. While this may be okay for low-level admin tasks, this constant “switching,” it turns out, is terribly inefficient and even detrimental to higher-level, strategic thinking. It actually costs you extra time and diminished results.

Second of all, you train your attention.

Attention is the earnest direction of your mind. It is, metaphorically speaking, how and when you “turn” your mind. It helps if you understand its three basic functions:
1. Alerting is the awareness that helps us sense our environment by registering stimuli. (As in “email alert.”)
2. Orienting is the focus that helps us respond to our environment by selecting information. (Just because a phone rings, it doesn’t mean you have to answer it; you choose to answer it.)
3. The executive network directs the kind of judgment, planning, and big-picture thinking required by leaders. (What Stephen Covey categorizes as “important” rather than “urgent.”)

In general, our culture has become too adept at alerting, too timid at orienting, and too remote from the executive network. It’s easy to squander our most precious commodity, our “undivided attention,” on routine managerial tasks, rather than channeling it into the kind of creative problem-solving that distinguishes a top executive.

Think of your attentional training as pilates for the brain. Your goals are to:

• notice fewer stimuli.
• respond more selectively.
• spend more time in big-picture thinking.

In other words, set aside the BlackBerry, design your take-action policies (how you will or won’t respond, under what circumstances), and schedule inviolable time for strategizing your life and career.

Bonus: Here are my top 10 tactics for working each day with more focused attention. They’ll help you to increase your productivity, enjoy your personal life, and prevent burnout. By focusing on what matters the very most, you can regain a sense of purposeful control across your work and personal life:

1. Re-commit to your values.
Itemize them, prioritize them, and write them down.

2. Refuse interruptions.
Sometimes they’re necessary; more often, they’re just a timesuck. Respond accordingly.

3. Quit multi-tasking.
Every time you “look away,” it’s harder to re-focus on the initial activity.

4. Schedule everything.
Take control: chunk similar activities and plan strategically, as much as you can.

5. Write a “NOT to-do” list.
Get ruthless about cutting out unnecessary or outworn obligations.

6. Do nothing for 15 minutes every day.
Clear mind space for strategic reflection and visioning.

7. Create explicit workplace processes that encourage big-picture thinking.
Wean your work culture away from task-orientation and crisis-addiction.

8. Mark boundaries.
Create simple rituals that respectfully demarcate your workday from your personal life.

9. Pick up a good book.
Challenging fare, especially non-fiction, will hone your deep focusing skills.

10. Declutter your home and workplace.
Create a visual space that reflects and inspires a clear head.

(Do you have a career question you’d like Dr. Daly to answer? Email her with your question.)

Ann Daly PhD (anndaly.com) is an executive coach, consultant, and speaker devoted to the success and advancement of women. She is the award-winning author of six books, including Clarity: How to Accomplish What Matters Most and Do-Over! How Women Are Reinventing Their Lives. Sign up for her eletter, “Women, Clarity, & Power.”