Attention skills vs Attention kills
/By Duncan Anderson and Sheldon Kendrick. To see all blogs click here.
Summary: your job likely involves many different activities, learning how to be great for each activity type is… good!
Pay attention to how you allocate your attention
Overview:
Another visualisation (since we should always be able to visualise something in two different ways) would be:
A high quality sportperson can move quickly and appropriately up and down the attention line.
To be really great at any task you should be able to move quickly to the appropriate position on the attention line. AKA know what type of attention is optimal AND be able to embody is ASAP.
It is highly likely that your job involves many different activities and therefore that you’ll need to have many different types of ‘attention’. Example activity types:
Problem solving by yourself
Group discussion meetings
Presenting to others
Providing feedback to someone 1:1
Listening to ‘empathize but not apologise’.
Comment:
I’d counsel against providing the same ‘attention type’ for when problem solving by yourself to when providing constructive feedback.
Attention Control = being able to point your energy where you want, how you want and with high resolution.
Being able to have the right approach (attention type and control) for the right activity means being madly skilled. Having the same approach (attention type) for all activities is madness, and often means the possibility of a good outcome is killed!
Mindfulness = Quality Attention Control = having the right attention type for the situation at hand.
Mindlessness = having one approach to all situations and / or no self awareness.
Jingle: “Having a default is a fault.”
“To the person with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
It’s not ‘hammer time’, it’s ‘I have many tools in my toolkit, let me carefully pick the right tool for the time and use it very well’... if that isn’t super catchy then I don’t know what is! Some might call it a killer catchy! (Yes I’m enjoying using the same word for opposing meaning!)
Cultivate Attention Control… because it’s cool!
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Details
A sports analogy (taken from Eric Harrison… who is wonderful :) )
“Top sportspeople consciously develop a wide range of attentional skills.”
“A team player needs to be able to switch from a tunnel-vision, spotlight focus when making a shot, to a wide-angle fluid attention when sensing what is happening on the whole field.”
“An athlete needs to be able to mobilise what is called ‘preparatory attention.’ This is when he / she stops, clears their mental space and imagines a few seconds ahead to a desired outcome.”
“A good sportsperson is able to turn their level of arousal up or down as required. They can recognise when they need maximum arousal and when they can mentally cruise (if the ball is far away). High arousal sustained for too long will make they brittle and jumpy. This is when athletes choke. Low arousal on the other hand leads to boredom and distraction.”
“All the above attentional skills are essential for the conservation of physical energy. Because of poor self-monitoring, many athletes run out of puff before the end of the game, and so do many parents and office workers.”
“Athletes are frequently taught these attentional skills. Nonspecialists like us tend to haphazardly learn them as required over a much greater range of activities, but the process is similar.”
Jingle: Don’t be haphazard, be hip to avoiding attention hazards!
It’s table time! A table used well is a totally terrific tool!
How can one cultivate one's ability to get good at the different activities (ie have awesome attention control)?
1. Know the major activities types for your role.
2. Attempt to articulate the optimal approach for each activity (attention type). A few examples:
Problem solving by yourself => 1. High intensity + 2. Low need to be aware of others
Group discussion meetings => 1. High intensity + 2. High need to be aware of others + 3. Optimise for learning from discussion (not yourself
Presenting to others => 1. High intensity + 2. Energy you have while presenting is very important
Providing feedback to someone 1:1 => 1. High empathy + 2. High need to be aware of others + 3. Optimise for understanding of other
Receiving feedback from someone 1:1 => 1. High emotional self awareness + 2. High emotional self regulation + 3. Concentrate on understanding not responding (and hopefully not reacting
Listening to ‘empathize but not apologise’ when someone is unhappy => 1. High empathy + 2. Try to help other with emotional self regulation + 3. Dampen don’t enflame (get to calm then try to figure out what to do)
Doing email => you need to manage your energy. In an attempt to this I stack energising and draining tasks next to each other to balance out (see this blog). Email is a quality ‘recovery’ low intensity activity that I layer strategically to offset ‘high intensity’ taks.
Support vs Leave along vs Push vs Intervene and what approach is best for each
3. Meditation. Yes you’ll see me on this train a bit more :). See my blog post on meditation.
Meditation = increased ability to be calm (this is key for all of the above, if you are tense / stressed in any IMO it’s worse)
Meditation = increased emotional self awareness (especially important in discussion meetings and when presenting… and just always!)
Meditation = increased emotional awareness of others
Meditation = increased ability to focus (this is building your stamina to remain on the attention type your choice)
Meditation = increased ability to let go of things (ie switch tasks efficiently)
4. Replaying events to see how you can do them better from a communication, emotional, logical and state of mind viewpoint.
This is one of my key 1:1 activities, ie replay an event with another to deconstruct. This is ‘post game analysis’. See this blog post.
I also personally pick one event that went well and one that went poorly and write to deconstruct them each week. It’s so instructive :)! Don’t be destructive, deconstruct so you can instructively improve.
“You don’t learn from your experiences, you learn from reflecting on your experiences.”
What are the levels of Attention Control:
-L1: have the same approach to every activity
L0: know there are different activities and that one should have different approaches (types of attention) for each activity.
L1: know what activities make up 80%+ of my role and the ideal attention type for each activity
L2: are able to consistently have right attention type for the activity at hand!
If you only take away one thing:
Good outcome = Doing the right things * Doing things right
If you don’t know the right kind of attention for the activity at hand… then you are likely not doing it right!
That’s it people!