Treat #55
: Focus - Focus - Focus
Yesterday I had a phone follow-up session with a client who was feeling pressure from the volume of emails in her In-box. At the beginning of the call there was over 250 emails in her In-box. Some of the emails had been read once and were mixed in with the unread emails. She was feeling pressured to complete them.
I suggested we play the game of how long does it take to read an email In-box. She started at the top with the most recent email and headed for the bottom without interruption. We had 40 minutes left on our call when she began and, by the end of the call, she had less than 150 emails left. The processing of the remaining 150 went quickly (after our call) as they were earlier versions of the emails she had already handled and could be deleted. The emails went quickly as she was focused and she was using the Outlook Method of reading email. She wasn't able to see the subjects or who had sent emails, just the content of each email individually as it automatically opened in front of her once she transferred or deleted the previous email. (If you are not already reading your email in this fashion, make the switch today. See instructions below.)
In total, it took her about an hour to process 250 emails and she loved doing it with her full attention and focus. She told me her practice of quickly checking emails and leaving them in the In-box until later, as she rushes off to a meeting, isn't working. In order to have the time to focus on her emails she decided to schedule the time on her calendar when she gets backlogged.
Feeling the time pressure and checking the In-box when there isn't time to process them to completion not only adds more pressure, it also splits your attention between what you are doing for the rest of the day and the half-processed emails. That is called stress.
Checking email only when all of them can be read, top to bottom, is optimal. And reading them twice a day (maybe three times) seems to handle the important stuff. If you are expecting a specific email, do the executive scan for that one email only, without letting your focus get lost looking at all the other email subjects and senders in your In-box. Trust that if someone really needs your attention and you don't respond to their email, they will find you. I find in working with clients there is rarely anything urgent that can't wait until the next email read-through.
As I write the final chapters of the book, I am continually reminded of the power of focusing my attention and the resulting clarity, relaxation and creativity that appears. If I let myself answer a phone call, I loose the flow. If I turn off the phone and respond to messages only during lunch and the end of the day, I have my full attention on what I am writing and everything else gets handled just fine. My experience of what seemed like an impossible task at the beginning is being completed quite easily and in less time than I imagined because I am focused.
In real estate it is location, location, location that makes the difference. In living a life of completing, it is focus, focus, focus.
Give yourself the gift of your full attention to focus on what needs completing. That means turning off the ringer (no pun intended) and other distractions/interruptions and being 100% with yourself in what you are doing. I promise, you will experience the difference and appreciate how relaxed you feel.
Now I am going to turn off this Ringer and move onward with the book.
Remember to keep thanking yourself for your loving and undivided attention.
Martha Invitations
1. Turn off all ringers and beepers for the next half hour and focus on only one thing that needs completing, that can be done in a half hour and do it. Don't do anything else in that time.
2. If you have five minutes before a meeting and notice you are trying to squeeze in your email, take five minutes time out instead—breathe, go for a walk down the hall or outside. You will be amazed at what it will do for your focus in the meeting.
3. Schedule focus time with yourself in the next couple of days for a particular project and be ruthless about not letting anything interrupt it.
* Change your Email Outlook settings as follows:
Tools/Options/Email Options/Edit drop down to say - after moving or deleting email - OPEN THE NEXT EMAIL. Click OK back to the In-box.
Highlight the first email and press the Enter key, which will open the email to the full size of the screen. Read the email, decide what you want to do with it—respond, delete or transfer to a folder. Take the action using Command keys: Ctrl R, Ctrl D or Ctrl Shift V. The next email will open without taking you back to the main screen. The exception is the emails you reply to. They can either be deleted (Ctrl D) or transferred to a folder (Ctrl Shift V).
If you use the Command keys as you read your email (instead of the mouse) you will see that your flow is not interrupted by taking your hand off the keyboard. Your focus will get you to the bottom of the In-box in no time.
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