Checking email, perusing social..
We all see the acute productivity cost with distraction.
We don’t get as much work done, we feel frustrated.
This is fairly clear and fairly self-centric.
However there’s another cost which is far bigger.
If we set any agreement with ourselves, another person, a group or organisation, become distracted, then fail to follow through, lose attention* or are late..
We are quickly decreasing the value of our agreement, or our word.
We are decreasing our ability to cultivate intent, which is a powerful tool for all that we do.
If we seek to maintain integrity with these (even very small) agreements, the value of our agreement goes up and our ability to cultivate intent in our own endeavours also goes up.
So, through distraction and a lack of integrity around the smaller items we shoot ourselves in the foot three times over:
-
We are less productive
-
We lose trust and attention with the particular party we made the agreement with
-
We lose our ability to cultivate intent, which can help us in any endeavour we choose
There are a couple ways we can go once we see this and value it:
-
Practice integrity, presence, “right speech” and focused attention tasks more regularly. (Yes, these are 100% a practice)
-
Hire some help – PA’s, VA’s to help you schedule. This can help distribute load for sure, which may or may not be related.
-
Learn to say “no.” Commit to less. If there is no meeting, you can’t be late. If there is no appointment, you can’t miss it. Often, a lot of our engagements aren’t needed and working on a skeleton frame can do wonders for attention, productivity and focus.
*I’d say this also includes the unspoken agreement of presence in conversation. Distraction (lack of attention) therefore , has a crippling effect on both connection and contribution.
