Attention Span Management

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What do we mean by Attention Span Management and why is it important? The concept of Attention Span Management applies to everyone but is especially important if you’re a knowledge worker running your own business where you are both the boss and the worker, and both roles are constantly competing for your attention. Attention Span is the amount of focussed attention we can give to the task at hand. It is a limited daily resource and it needs to be managed carefully. Your levels of Attention Span also varies throughout the day so it can be helpful to split the day into 3 distinct categories of Attention Span. • Proactive, Creative, Boss Time • Active, Productive, Worker Time • Inactive, Organising, Admin Time By identifying when the peaks and troughs are for your attention span, and by categorising your tasks accordingly, you can then use this concept to ensure you get the most out of your limited attention span resource. So, let’s look at each category. Proactive, Creative, Boss Time This is the time when your attention span is at its highest. The tanks are full and you’re rearing to go. This is when you should be doing your most creative work, making your most important decisions or doing your most complex tasks. It is the time for moving things forward, planning you day or your week, doing creative things like writing or if you are a knowledge worker, this is when you should be doing all those boss type things such as Sales Forecasting, Business Reviews etc, to make sure your business is still on the right track and moving forward. Active, Productive, Worker Time This is the time of day when you are most active doing your main work tasks. Again, looking at the knowledge worker this is when you forget about the business and boss things and get on with actually doing the day-to-day work that your business produces and is paid for. You have now changed hats and you are the worker at the coal face of the business. Inactive, Organising, Admin Time This is that time of the day when you feel that slump. We all have one, and this is when you should be doing things that don’t require much thought. Things like organising your desk, doing your filing, ordering stationery etc. What a crime it would be to waste your important Proactive Time, ordering new toner for your printer. So how do you know what to do when? Well, we are all different and we all have different circadian rhythms, but many of us find it best to be Proactive or Creative for the first few hours of the morning, Active or Productive during the main part of the day and then Inactive towards the end of the day when you feel you’ve just had enough for one day. As a knowledge worker, let me use myself as an example: • From 09:00am – 10:00am I am in Proactive, Creative, Boss Time mode doing things like Reviewing Justtasks and planning my day, making sales calls etc. • From 10:00am – 12:30pm I am in Active, Productive, Worker Time doing worker things like writing software. During this time, I have my emails and phone turned off. I am free from distractions and I can really focus because I know the business side of things was all taken care of earlier this morning. • From 12:30am – 1:30pm I take a break and have some lunch. • From 1:30pm – 2:00pm I pop back into Proactive, Creative, Boss Time to check my phone and emails for any messages that may have come in during the morning and deal with anything urgent. All non-urgent tasks are added to Justtasks. • From 2:00pm – 4:30pm I am back in Active, Productive, Worker Time for my afternoon session. Again, my phone and emails are turned off during this time. • From 4:30pm – 5:00pm I switch to Inactive, Organising, Admin Time. It is winddown time at the end of the day and by now I have probably had enough of staring at my computer, so I do things like filing and organising my desk ready for the next day. This is just an example you can use but if you look closely at how you work, I am sure you can modify the above plan to best suit your rhythm. Of course, some of you may look at this and be thinking, he is only working 5 hours a day! Whilst that may be true, I can assure you they are an extremely productive 5 hours. I am free from interruptions of emails and phone calls and free from business distractions which are taken care of at the appropriate time. In the Task Form screens of Justtasks, you have an optional dropdown box which will allow you to categorise each task to remind you as to what time of the day you should be doing it. Green means the tanks are full and it is Proactive Time, Orange is you running along throughout the day in Active Time and Red is for when you’re all tuckered out and almost asleep at your desk. If you use the power of Justtasks properly, you will never have to remember anything but you’ll never forget anything either. If you then boost that by allocating your time as described above, you cannot fail but to move forward towards your goals every single day. So, I encourage you to try this out and see if it adds value to your day. Justtasks – Today’s To-Do List.