Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:01:33: The importance of finding focus

00:06:19: Deep dive into distraction…

00:06:37: Step 1: identify your distraction downfalls

00:11:00: Step 2: understand why

00:17:08: Step 3: rank the downfalls

00:17:30: Step 4: find your friction

00:21:05: Summary of steps to distraction downfalls

00:22:05: Idea for action 1: focus friends

00:25:44: Idea for action 2: ask yourself if it can wait

00:27:44: Idea for action 3: opportunity cost

00:31:13: Five coach-yourself questions

00:32:01: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Helen Tupper: Hi, I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And this is a Squiggly Careers podcast where very week, Sarah and I talk about a different topic that we hope will help you to navigate the ups and downs of our Squiggly Careers with just that little bit more confidence and control that we often might need in the middle of a knotty moment.  This week, we've got a mini-series all about finding your focus.  We know it's a topic that's on lots of people's, including our minds at the moment. 

I feel like I'm just in search of focus! So, the series is going to start today with me and Sarah.  We're going to get super-practical about focus and give you some ideas for action and some coach-yourself questions to really kickstart your focus.  And then, for the rest of the week, we've actually got three guest episodes to listen to, where we're going to dive a little bit deeper into focus from a few different perspectives. So, on Wednesday, tomorrow, you're going to hear Sarah talking to Emma Gannon about how you can focus and disconnect, so all of those things that might get in the way of your focus, Emma's going to give us some insights on how to stop that. 

On Thursday, you're going to hear me talking to Sophie Devonshire and Ben Renshaw about how to focus and love your work.  So, if you're feeling like you want to be a bit more purposeful and engage in the work that you do, their insights from their book, LoveWork, will be really useful. Then, the last episode in the series, which comes out on Friday, is all about how to focus and increase your attention, and Sarah is going to be talking to Johann Hari about some insights from his new book, which is all about focus.

Sarah Ellis: So, why is this important in Squiggly Careers?  Well, I feel like this is something we don't really need to make the business case for why we're talking about this, because everybody I talk to is trying to do a better job of finding focus.  The more I've thought about this, the more I think there's a bit of gap between almost our rational objective and probable sensible view of focus, and then almost the reality. So, you know if we were sitting here at our best, we would all recognise things like trying to do too many different things at once is not a good thing.  We probably all know the myth of multitasking, that you can't multitask, your brain can't do it.  So, even if you think you're multitasking, all you're doing is switching really quickly between different things and every time you do that, you lose a bit of focus and you add a bit of time onto your day, and you're much less efficient. When we don't find our focus, we're a lot less likely to achieve the things that really matter to us, and yet it still feels harder.  I think, for most of us, it perhaps feels harder than it ever has before.

Helen Tupper: I know, Sarah, I feel like I'm in the middle of some really dangerous moment of human evolution.  I know, I do, listen!  I feel like over time, we've got smarter and smarter, we started out building a wheel, not you and me, our ancestors; Sarah's like, "Where are you going with this?"  And then we built the internet and got quite clever and started doing some smart things. 

But now, I feel like my brain might be getting a bit less smart.  As in, I can't sit with a thought for long enough to process and develop it, because I just get distracted by stuff. I think focus is not just a nice skill for people to think about and develop, I think it's actually a really important cognitive challenge.  So, even though this is going to be an actionable podcast today, I do think it is something that is very important for people to have an intention about, like how can I increase their focus, because I think it might be a bit dangerous for our development to not have focus and to let our brains get completely distracted so we can't sit with a thought.  It's quite a serious point, Sarah, but this is where my reflection on this is going.

Sarah Ellis: Well really, what you're describing is very much what Johann Hari talks about in Stolen Focus.  So to be honest, he explains why you feel as you're feeling, and why also you're not unique in feeling that way.  And some of those things are out of our control.  Some of those have been developed around us and we perhaps haven't consciously opted in or chosen for those things to get in our way, but they've become part of our lives.  But his point is, we do then have a choice. 

We almost then need to refocus. I think for a lot of us it's perhaps, if you feel less focused than you've been before, how do you rediscover and refocus in terms of your attention; what does that look like?  And I think your point is a really good one in terms of, in Squiggly Careers, I think sometimes there is a bit of a pressure about, "Am I doing enough?" and you see other people, and we know career comparison is not very useful, but this sense of, "Everyone else seems to be doing 4 million things, and they seem to be able to focus enough to make all this stuff happen; why is it just me that seems to find it hard to finish an email?" or whatever it might be, just to pick an example that I'm going to talk about later. But I do think this is something that we have to choose to think, "I'm going to really think about finding focus", and with the confidence that you will do better work as a result, but also the knowledge that the process will feel uncomfortable, because I have got a tiny bit obsessed by this over the last few months, partly because I read Johann's book, then I read Emma's, then I started to do some research on it, then I watched Social Dilemma on Netflix when I had COVID; and then you really start to realise that, not even just in the work that you do, but in all aspects of your life, like I love reading fiction, if I want to read more fiction, then I need to not interrupt myself reading fiction to check my WhatsApp messages, or whatever it might be. So, I've been doing quite a lot of experimenting in the past eight weeks, I would say, with rediscovering and re-finding my focus, and it is so interesting how some of it feels so alien and unfamiliar, just because we've not practised some of these things for quite a long time, or we've got really used to acting in a certain way.  

So, it is a fascinating area, but one that I'm convinced that we can all choose to get better at, that it is in our control that we can get better. So now, we're just going to really practical.  I feel that was about as philosophical as I'm going to get, because the interviews this week really explore focus in terms of some of those bigger questions.  So we thought, "How can we be most useful?  We'll do some tools to try out and some ideas for action and some coach-yourself questions, which we are live using on ourselves, so this is not something we've got sorted.

Helen Tupper: So, I'm going to talk through a distraction deep dive, so you can understand what might be taking some of your focus away, kind of get a little bit of a baseline for your attention basically.  And then, we're going to go into some really short ideas for actions, so that you can do something different.  Then, we've got a few coach-yourself questions.  So, that's basically what you're going to hear from us now. So, let's kick off then with this distraction deep dive.  There are four steps to this, we're going to really structure it, everybody.  Step one is all about understanding, "What are your distraction downfalls?"  These are the things that are getting in the way of your focus, and we want you to be as specific as possible.  So, rather than just saying, "Notifications", for example, which notifications?  Is it Instagram that keeps popping up, or is it emails, your Outlook, or Slack messages, whatever it is? 

Be as specific as possible about what that notification is. So, for example, I would say there are two tech-driven, and my two specific distraction downfalls are WhatsApp and Instagram, but for very different reasons.  So, WhatsApp is a distraction for me, because I feel like I want to be responsive to my team.  So, it's not that I'm being nosy, or that it's easy, it's because I feel like I want to be responsive.  Whereas, Instagram pops up and I think, "I'll just have a little look".  You never know what there might be on there to see or stalk or buy, who knows?  Sarah, what specifically is a distraction downfall for you?

Sarah Ellis: So, the one that's really top of mind for me at the moment is, so I start things and don't finish them.  So, I start an email and don't always finish it at the same time, which logically makes no sense.  Say you're doing a presentation or trying to do a slide, or anything like that, I sometimes will do a bit of it and then for some reason, get distracted.  I think I get distracted by either something else that I would like to do instead; I think, "That's more interesting".  Sometimes it's something easier, so I think there are times where because it's hard work, I think, like you say, you want the easy opt out and an easy opt out is answering an email.

But often, I actually think it's more about because I've got things like multiple tabs open on my screen and stuff like that, and then I spot, you know you've got the red dot, and I actually have every notification turned off, but there are some things I can't quite figure out still quite how to get rid of.  So, there is something that flits my attention, and I think I do way too much switching, and I know that is inefficient, and I'm working so hard on it at the moment.  So, that's definitely one for me.  I think that's less about the technology actually, I think it's more me and my brain.

Helen Tupper: I'm going to come back to that point in step two, Sarah.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, so I think that is a bit less techy, but I do get distracted by WhatsApp messages, actually sometimes ones that are not urgent.  So, I find it hard to know -- I don't have notifications, but when I go into WhatsApp thinking people have said things and I've not contributed, that might be actually more like family or friends, so it's not responsible like your work one like, "I want to be responsive".  Mine is just, "Oh, family and friends are chatting", I have sort of fear of missing out maybe?

Helen Tupper: Oh no, really like, "I should contribute to this, I'm missing out on some family bants"!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I'm a bit like, "What's happening; what's the chat?"  But sometimes, like right now, would not be a good time to get involved in that chat, because I've actually got something really important I need to do, or you're trying to get through something.  So, I think definitely that. Then, I'm trying to think of other distractions.  Sometimes, Instagram, but that's one of the ones, I have to say, I've worked quite hard on over the past couple of months, and the same with things, like I say, I have no email notifications, I'm trying to leave my phone in different rooms at various different times, which is quite interesting how that feels.  Sometimes that feels quite uncomfortable to do that. I realised sometimes that I was watching -- say you're watching a Netflix programme, or whatever, in an evening, that I wasn't watching a full programme without ever checking without my phone during that programme.

Helen Tupper: 100%, yeah, I do it all the time!

Sarah Ellis: I was like, "Who am I?"

Helen Tupper: Me?!

Sarah Ellis: That doesn't make me feel good about myself though at all.

Helen Tupper: No, it doesn't make me feel good, but I agree.

Sarah Ellis: I was like, "I can't even sit and watch something for 40 minutes without checking my phone".  Then, when I started to really question that, I was like, "Why?  Is that because that's urgent and I really need to be doing that?"  It's never true, no one ever needs me!

Helen Tupper: Right, okay everyone, we're going to move on to step one, before we deep dive too far into distractions!  Step one is just about naming your distraction downfalls.  So, perhaps there are some of those that you can relate to that Sarah and I have shared, or maybe you have some other ones.  Things that I've heard in the past are things like making a cup of tea or pets or family.  There's all kinds of things that will take your attention away from the thing that you want to focus on.

Step number two is to understand why.  So, we've done the what, what your distraction downfall is; step number two is to understand why it is a distraction for you.  So, this is a bit of a build on something that Nir Eyal talked to us about in a recent podcast, and he said that there are generally three reasons why a distraction is going to be your downfall. The first is, it's an internal reason, so you are distracted by your phone or making a cup of tea, because you're basically trying to avoid something harder or less enjoyable, so you're like, "I'll just make a quick cup of tea, I'll just have a fun scroll on Facebook", or whatever it is, and it's because you're avoiding something that you're not really enjoying, or is quite hard. The second reason that it might be a distraction downfall for you could be something in your external environment.  So, Sarah talking about notifications or pings, or perhaps other people are coming into the space where you're trying to focus and work.  So, there's something, not outside of your control, but it's in your external environment.

The third reason that it could be a distraction downfall could be poor planning.  So, let's say you go, "Do you know what I'm going to do, I'm going to really focus on this project, I'm going to get it done in the next hour", but you do that in a place where lots of people are likely to come to your desk.  Maybe you decide to do that on the one day this month that you've gone into then office, when everyone hasn't seen you for ages, and they want to know exactly what you've been up to and what's been going on with your life.  That's probably a really bad time to try and find your focus, because there are going to be some inevitable distractions that come your way there. So, it's important to know not only what your distraction downfall is, but why that distraction is drawing you away from the thing that you want to give your focus to, because the action that you take will be different, depending on the root cause of your distraction.

Sarah Ellis: So, what do you think yours are mainly, internal, external or planning?

Helen Tupper: I would say internal and external.  It's not really planning for me.  It's internal because it's quicker, that's why, I like to move stuff on quick.  So, I can reply to an email really quickly.  I'll often go to a quick task first.  If you think about writing the book, that would be a good one for me.  You need to focus on writing a book, so you need your head in a writing zone for a good, we would say, a minimum two to three hours to find your flow with writing a chapter on a book. For me, that is really hard.  For me to sit and do one thing for two to three hours, I find really hard.  So, within about 45 minutes, I'll be like, "I could just send a quick email", because that gives me that sense of achievement, and it's not necessarily meaningful achievement, but it gives me a sense of achievement that sitting down and writing for three hours doesn't always do. So, I would probably say it's more of an internal challenge for me.  What about you?

Sarah Ellis: I think probably internal and planning.  So, I did have one example last week of planning, which was an interesting one, where I wanted to read an article.  A couple of weeks ago actually, it was preparing for our Monkeys podcast, our Monkey Management podcast, and I wanted to read an article in a book about that to prepare.  So, I wanted to focus on it, because I wanted to understand what that article was saying, and also think about the "so what" for us for our podcast. I'd got it open on my desk where I work, and that's also where all of my tech is, that's where all my Post-it Notes are, that's where all the to-do lists are.  I'm surrounded, I'm literally sitting here right now surrounded by work; work I've not done, work I need to do, books I've not read, etc.  The way that I was reading this article was insane.  I was reading two or three sentences, then doing something different. 

Then, I'd go back to it, probably re-read those sentences and then maybe read an extra sentence or to, or maybe read a paragraph at a push. I actually got mad at myself!  I was like, "This is ridiculous!"  I'm just talking to myself about that, and that was poor planning, because that was, I knew that task needed to be done and I knew I needed to find focus and I was doing it in exactly the wrong environment.  It was not about going, "I need to sort out where I work", it was honestly as simple as I went downstairs. I went downstairs with that article, left the environment where I do loads of other stuff where there are quite a lot of distractions of the day-to-day, sat there, did have a cup of tea, I don't see cups of tea as distraction, I see them as a necessary hydration part of my day!  So, I got myself a cup of tea, sat there, read it, it took me 16 or 17 minutes, really interesting, wrote down some good notes, felt really good about myself and really felt like I'd understood; and I felt a really good sense of achievement doing that. 

I didn't feel good about the time that I'd wasted trying to do it in other ways, but it did make me think. And nothing happened.  You know that thing again about, "What did I miss in that 17, 18 minutes?" or, "Did it really matter?"  Of course it didn't, it was absolutely fine.  So, that was all in my own control.  So, that's definitely sometimes planning, if you're not in the right environment, I think that makes those distraction downfalls easier to succumb to; that's my observation. Then I think sometimes, mine are internal, in terms of thinking I don't care about the quick thing like you, we're different in that way; I love working on the same thing for a day, no problem with that at all.  It's, "Am I enjoying working on that thing?"  So, yours is about ease and pace, mine is about enjoyment.  So sort of in a selfish way, if I don't want to be doing something, but we need to do it, I distract myself, because I might not want to do it.

Helen Tupper: I see this!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I'm sure you do.  So, mine is sometimes more about that.  That's almost when I think I have to have the most perseverance and grit to actually get those things done.  If it's something that's hard and I enjoy, I could turn everything off for four hours, no problem.  If it's hard and I don't want to be doing it, I also have an internal monologue of, "I don't really want to do this.  Why are we doing this when I don't want to be doing it?"  So, that also isn't helpful. I think, because I'm a thinker, not a doer like Helen, I end up with a very unhelpful internal spiralling monologue, which goes alongside trying to do the actual work and is quite distracting.

Helen Tupper: I really feel for you and your brain!  Okay, so step one, we've named our distraction downfalls; step two, we've worked out why they are a distraction for us; step three is to rank them.  So, they're not all going to be equally distracting.  Like Sarah said, "To be honest, I go and have a cup of tea, I wouldn't even call it a distraction", because that's not a big thing for her.  But perhaps the checking your emails, or going on the family WhatsApp chat is a bigger distraction. So, it's important that you rank them, basically so you can prioritise where you put your effort and energy to do step number four, which is to find your friction.  So, for the highest one or two distraction downfalls that you've got, think about how you can find some friction to stay focused.  So, if I give my example, and maybe, Sarah, you can do it to bring it to life for people. So, my biggest distraction downfall is my phone. 

The reason, if you go back to the why, the reason it is is because it's quick and easy and I'm trying to avoid something that might be hard and slow.  So, the best way for me to find friction is to basically train my brain to not give into it so quickly.  So, for example, Nir gave me this advice and it's really, really stuck with me.  Saying, "No, I won't give in to that distraction", isn't that helpful, because really that's too hard for me to do, it's too appealing. But he said that you've got to say, "But not yet.  I will give in to it, I can go on my phone, I can respond to that email, I can look at something on Instagram, but just not yet".  For me, the friction that I have is how long I can go without checking, and that almost becomes a bit of a target.  So, I can feel myself going towards it and I'll be like, "I'll check it in five minutes [or] I'll check it in ten minutes", and the idea is that you build up a bit of resistance to the attraction of that distraction over time. Then, with a bit of effort on building that resistance over time, it's less appealing for you, it's less of an autopilot urge and it's more of a conscious consideration.  So, that's what I'm working on at the moment, is feeling the urge when it happens, but then just telling myself, "You can, but just not yet", and trying to make that "not yet" that bit longer each time.

Sarah Ellis: I think the ranking really helped me, because I've been thinking about this quite a lot, this finding your focus.  And I think if you just think about distractions, it can actually feel too overwhelming to know where to start, and you just keep going as you were.  I've taken them one at a time, so my one at the moment is really that starting and not finishing stuff, and recognising that that is inefficient. You talk about training your brain, and I think that's a good shortcut to what we're trying to do.  What I train my brain to do is partly, I think, a bit of a reward mechanism.  So, I almost think if I start and finish, almost in order, so not start one thing then start another and then start another and then finish another, so start and then finish, start and then finish these four things that I need to do, then I'll go and have a break and go and get a coffee, or then I'll go for a walk and listen to a podcast.

So usually, I think, the reason I don't finish stuff is that point that I'm not that interested in it ultimately, or it's not a really motivating thing for me, so I let myself get distracted.  But ultimately, those things have got to get done, so would I rather spend more time on those things, or less time on those things?  And if I start and finish, I will spend less time on those things.  That's been motivating for me, because I've thought, "I want that time back", because then I can spend that time doing something else". So, it's a bit of an "if/then" statement like, "If I start and finish things at the same time, then I will find more time", which is one of the things I'm really trying to do at the moment, "and I will find more time for those things that really matter to me, like being able to get out and go for a walk every day during my working day".  So, you know the carrot and the stick thing?  It's the carrot, I think, if I've got that right.  I've gone with, "I'm not going to beat myself up, but I am going to have a sort of, 'What's the motivation?  How can I stay committed to it?'"

Helen Tupper: So, I know that we talked around those different steps a little bit, but it is because it does take a little bit of time to go through them, and it is really useful.  But just in summary, step one: name your distraction downfalls, so that's all about the what; step two: understand why, internal, external, maybe a planning challenge; step three: rank them in terms of how much they're getting in the way of your focus, from high to low; and then step four: find your friction so that you can stay focused, really concentrating on your number one, number two biggest distraction downfalls.

Sarah Ellis: So, before we give you five coach-yourself questions, we've just got three very short additional ideas for action, so just small things that we've noticed can be really helpful in terms of finding your focus, because I do think this is not something where you go from almost having no focus to 100% focus.  I don't feel like that's the jump!  It's just one of those where you probably go, you probably want to find more focus than you've got today. I have found actually experimenting with what works and what doesn't is a good way to think about this.  So, first idea for action we're calling, Focus Friends.  So, find a focus friend who can help you stick to that thing that's important to you.  So, let's say it's Helen, for example, just to take an example of somebody who I spend some time with.  So, Helen has 4 million notifications popping up on her phone that drives me insane.

Helen Tupper: It does drive you mad!

Sarah Ellis: It really drives me mad and I'm like, "Put your phone away, or at least turn it over".  Occasionally she might turn it over if she's in a really good mood that day.  So, if Helen, for example, said to me, "Do you know what, when we get together, that time is really important to me, Sarah, so I'm going to keep my phone in my bag, because probably that will be fine".

Helen Tupper: Oh my God, I so have to do this next time!

Sarah Ellis: Look how nervous she's looking at me!

Helen Tupper: I also feel like I now have to do this next time I'm with you!

Sarah Ellis: I mean, if you're thinking I've not really thought about this before we recorded today…!  So, what I was thinking was, "I know that's going to be really hard for Helen", so what we could maybe do is say, "Okay, Helen, you know I always need breaks, because I like to have a break to refresh and stuff.  Every time we have a break that I always need, then you're allowed to look at your phone when we're in a break".  So, it's not that you can't look at your phone at all while we're meeting, it's that you've probably got to wait 40 minutes before you can look at your phone. But by saying it out loud, now there what doesn't work is Helen's not committed to that, because she isn't saying it out loud.  I've suggested it to her and she's basically going --

Helen Tupper: I think you've forced it on me on the podcast and not talked to me about it!

Sarah Ellis: I'm not quite sure I was quite right!  So, if you do say it out loud and you have developed it, you create an expectation of yourself, and also there's the expectation of someone else for you as well.  So, that reciprocity is actually really powerful.  It doesn't need to be the same person every time, but I think you could actually have some fun with this as a team and actually go, "What's everyone's distraction downfall?" because everyone has them. So, I might say to Helen, "Right, okay, I'm going to try and do that start and finish thing, and I'm going to try and make sure that there's only one day next week where that happens.  So, every other day where I start something and finish it", that actually sounds quite ambitious, wait a minute!  Now that I'm saying it out loud, now that I'm forcing myself to do my own activity…

Helen Tupper: Less comfortable now, right?!

Sarah Ellis: Okay, so maybe I only have two days where I could think of examples where I did start stuff and didn't finish it, and those other three days, I stuck to it and managed to find friction, reduce that distraction downfall.  It is interesting how saying something out loud, the level of commitment you feel to it is really different. So, I think in focus friends, it could be your friends that you don't work with, I think you could talk about it on Teams and be like, "What's everyone's distraction downfall you're going to work on this week, and how are you going to find some friction?"  And then we could just be like, "Well, how's everyone going?"  There's some things that I've tried in the last eight weeks that have been a disaster where I've been like, "I'm surprised that I can't do it, but I can't", and so then you have to work back a bit from, "Why not, and what else might I try; and why has this been so difficult; and what might I do instead?"

Helen Tupper: Just putting a shoutout in case people want to experiment with focus friends but they're like, "I don't know who my friend is", just in case; I mean, Sarah and I are sort of stuck with each, so we can always support each other this way.  But focusmate.com is free, I think you get three free sessions a month before you have to pay something like $5, but it basically randomly matches you with someone. You put in a time with someone and say, "I want to focus for 30 minutes", and it will match you with somebody else who wants to focus for 30 minutes, and you basically introduce yourselves.  You don't have to do anything more than that, but it's the idea of an accountability partner.  So, it might not go so far as being a friend.  If you want to experiment with this intentional focus by having someone who can hold you accountable, focusmate.com could be a good thing to experiment with.

Sarah Ellis: So, idea for action two is to ask yourself, "Can it wait?"  So, I think part of the reason that sometimes we struggle to focus is we are trying to do too much at once.  Jim Collins talks a bit about this, and when we've talked about time before, I think Oliver Burkeman has talked a bit about this as well, that we sometimes are all guilty, I think, of creating a false sense of urgency. So, either we assume something is urgent and we've actually not stress-tested that at all, we've not asked the question; or, maybe something is important and it is urgent, but perhaps it's not as urgent as you imagine.  So, you might think it has to be done by tomorrow, but actually it has to be done by Friday.  Or, "Okay, could you do this within the next week?"  "Well, that might be a bit of a challenge, but what about if we did it in the next ten days?" I think that then means that the more your to-do list stacks up, the more tasks there are on your to-do list, I think for a lot of us, that then equals lots of switching, lots of flitting around.  It certainly does for me, and I hear that from lots of people in our workshops.  Everyone's like, "I feel so overwhelmed by what I've got to do", you either do nothing, or you try and do everything all at once. I think just making sure -- I always think about it as just thinking, "Just pressing pause"; just pressing pause and thinking, "Do I need to do all of these things today, right here, right now, or actually would I increase my focus if I was really clear about today, what's the one thing I really need to focus my energy and effort on?" and perhaps there's a bit of a leeway then around the edges for some of those other things.  But what's the most important thing for you to focus on today, and I think that then also just gives you that prioritisation that can be really helpful for us.

Helen Tupper: I think with urgency as well, someone else's urgent doesn't have to be your urgent.  You just take it on by, okay it's important to you, don't challenge it.  And also, you sometimes, and this is more what I do, you create your own urgency, and it's sort of to make you feel more productive, but then it ironically makes you less productive.  But I think it's understanding where that urgency is coming from.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.  And then, the third idea for action is about opportunity cost.  So, whenever we lose anything, this idea of kind of loss aversion, it's a really powerful motivator for us.  It's like, "What's the negative --" it's actually quite a negative thing, "What's the negative cost or consequence of you being distracted, of all your distraction downfalls?" So, perhaps with Helen's notifications, which I feel like together, Squiggly Careers team, we are going to -- do you know what, in 2022, this is our together task!  I feel like getting her to turn those notifications off would be a massive win.  But talking about it probably in the way that we have so far is probably not going to change behaviour. But if we talk to Helen about, "What is the loss aversion?"  Well, Helen, you are going to be a less good CEO for Amazing If if you keep those notifications on.  You are going to do a worse job at making careers better for everyone, things that you really care about that you're really committed to.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, it works!  That's more effective than telling me to turn it off when we're in a room together.

Sarah Ellis: But even, I think, when I think about that one for you, I think, "Well, you are missing out and everybody else is missing out on those things that you are brilliant at.  We need those make-it-happen skills, we need those brilliant ideas, we need that person who can prototype something in 15 minutes; but we don't need that person who has got 4 million notifications and clearly gets distracted because of it". That's the other thing, is going, "You will reduce your impact.  Your ability to do your best work will be diminished by those distraction downfalls".

Helen Tupper: But just to put a little bit of a defensive challenge in place, I don't actually think it's as easy as going, "Just turn it off, because actually there's an opportunity cost there", because part of it will be an internal thing that we've talked about, but part of it will be that that stuff needs doing, and I don't know who's going to do it if I don't do it. But the point is, let's talk about that, because what I'm doing at the moment is going, "That stuff needs doing, I'm the person who does it, therefore I can't stop doing it and then I need to be on alert for that stuff".  And if I just turn off the things that we're calling a distraction to increase my focus, then I think that does actually introduce risk, that other people might not appreciate, into our business, because they're not doing the stuff that I just do without them even knowing about it. But that's sort of the point.  I do think there's this bit in the middle of, before you stop the thing that might have been distracting you, just think about how important is it, and does it need to be you, and who else could help? 

But I think that is a really good conversation to have, where you could have quite a lot of empathy with the team. If I say, for example, "Well, the reason that I'm distracted by Instagram, half the time is because I think it's important to respond to our community and no one else does it", and therefore they could then become, "Okay, well if all think that as a team that's important, how as a team could we do it?"  Or, "I worry that these things will get missed in my inbox if I don't pick them up", well okay, let's have a process in place where that does get picked up. So, I think it's the confidence in knowing that things would get picked up by other people, or you jointly agree that they're not quite as important as you think they are, rather than just completely turning off, because I think that isn't that helpful for someone, well for me in particular, who might be distracted by something they think is actually quite important to do. So, having gone through all of that, having gone through all of that reflection and hopefully having the opportunity maybe to talk to some other people about distractions, we do have five coach-yourself questions now for you to really think through, so you can get specific about what you might do differently.  So, here they are. Number one: "What's the most important objective or project that I'm working on?"  Number two: "What would be the biggest benefit of increasing my focus over the next month?"  Coach-yourself question number three: "What's my biggest distraction downfall that I am in control of?"  Number four: "Who could help me to improve my focus?"  And, coach-yourself question number five: "When can I disconnect to have some time to think?" We will summarise those five questions on the PodSheet.  You can get the link to that in the show notes.  So, if you do want to work those through for yourself, they'll be there, you don't have to replay and write each one of them down, they're all on the PodSheet for you.

Sarah Ellis: So, thank you so much for listening to today's episode.  As always, if you've got any ideas for episodes, or things you'd like us to cover, or to spend some time disagreeing about our various different approaches on, please get in touch with us.  It helps us as much as it helps all of our listeners, and sometimes I cannot believe that people do listen to this.  But some people do and seem to find it helpful.  So, as long as that happens, we will keep going.  I can't remember how many episodes we've done now, 260 episodes?

Helen Tupper: I mean, I'd look at my phone, but I'm aware it's a distraction downfall, so I can't answer that question for you!

Sarah Ellis: Brilliant!  I feel like after this, we're going to be straight on our phones WhatsApping each other.  I can't work out if that's ironic or really counterproductive, or whether we should just focus on some more work; who knows?  But we do really appreciate you all listening, we know loads of you share the podcast, which we're always really grateful for.  Please rate, review and subscribe if you've not had a chance to yet, because that really helps us to share Squiggly far and wide with lots of people who might not have found us yet.

Helen Tupper: So, that's all from us this week, but do not forget that we have three further conversations all to help you find your focus, made with a bit less friction and disagreement than you might have had on this one! 

So don't forget, tomorrow you've got Sarah and Emma talking about how to disconnect, then you've got me talking to Sophie Devonshire and Ben Renshaw about loving work, and then finally on Friday, you've got Sarah talking to Johann Hari about how to find your focus and increase your attention. So, do listen, do let us know what you think, do let us know how it might have helped you, because it helps us as well, and we'll be back with you next week.  Bye, everyone.

Sarah Ellis: Bye, everyone.