![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media.licdn.com\/mpr\/mpr\/jc\/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAWxAAAAJDMxNjhmNzZhLTJiOGQtNDQwMC04YzU0LTc0MWI1ZGJlMGI2MA.png?w=736&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
What are you supposed to be doing right now, instead of reading this post?<\/p>\n
I ask because there are countless demands competing for your attention, right? Your inbox. Text messages you need to return. Headlines in the news. A stakeholder who needs something. A problem at home. The deliverable due in a few hours. Something that went wrong on a project. An angry customer. A demanding boss. Something that you\u2019re supposed to remember to do but can\u2019t quite remember right now. Oh yeah, and this article.<\/p>\n
Distractions bombard our lives. It\u2019s an unrelenting attack of competing demands, all vying for at least a moment of our attention.\u00a0Gloria Mark\u2019s research<\/a>\u00a0finds that typical information workers are interrupted once every three minutes. Lest you want to lay the blame at the feet of millennials, open floor plans, or technology, Mark found that 44% of the time we interrupt ourselves!<\/p>\n We live in the shallows. Getting time for deep, focused, uninterrupted work is rare for most of us. If\u00a0deep work<\/em>\u00a0was a species, it would unquestionably be on the endangered list. And it takes a toll on our projects, our organizations, and on our very selves.<\/p>\n What if your ability to succeed wasn\u2019t really about your IQ? Or the number of hours you work? Or your title? Or your looks or the family you\u00a0grew up in or the college you graduated from?<\/p>\n What if your ability to succeed as a project manager in the years ahead came down to this: your ability to focus<\/em>. I\u2019m talking about your ability to carve out undistracted time, pushing your cognitive capabilities to their limit, allowing you to create new value and improve your skills.<\/p>\n After coaching hundreds of executives, one common thread I\u2019ve seen across the most successful leaders comes down to what they focus on. The most successful have developed the ability to focus on the most important things, most of the time. They are less susceptible to being distracted by the trivial.<\/p>\n We all are gifted the same 24 hours a day. The difference is what we pay attention to.<\/p>\n I recently interviewed Cal Newport<\/a>\u00a0about his book\u00a0Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World<\/a>. Newport offers up his\u00a0Deep Work Hypothesis<\/em>: the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly\u00a0rare<\/em>\u00a0at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly\u00a0valuable<\/em>\u00a0in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate the skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.<\/p>\n Makes sense. But certainly you must be tempted to think, “Cal is an academic! What does he know about the realities of my business life? He doesn’t know my project load. Or boss. Or demands at home.” Or whatever objections come to mind that convince us that deep work is no longer possible in today’s work culture.<\/p>\n Well, before you get back to what you’re supposed to be doing anyway, here’s the seed I’d like to plant. I\u2019m taking Newport’s hypothesis as a challenge and I invite you to join me. I’d like you to join me in cultivating the ability to get more deep work into our weeks, making it the core of our working life.<\/p>\n In my next post, I\u2019ll share some practical insights from Newport\u2019s book\u00a0Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World<\/a>. For now, here\u2019s where you can listen to Cal Newport talk about his book, in his own words:\u00a0http:\/\/PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com\/144<\/a>.<\/p>\n I’d love to hear your thoughts! What are some practical things you do to stay focused on the most important priorities, most of the time?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What are you supposed to be doing right now, instead of reading this post? I ask because there are countless demands competing for your attention, right? Your inbox. Text messages you need to return. Headlines in the news. A stakeholder who needs something. A problem at home. The deliverable due in a few hours. Something… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[97,109,111],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p488Wj-6R","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":426,"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions\/426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Life in the Shallows<\/h2>\n
Deep Work<\/h2>\n