When you wake up in the morning, is your mind already operating at full-throttle? You haven’t even gotten out of bed, but your mental to-do list jolts you awake like a swarm of hornets. Anxiety grabs you by the throat and says, “C’mon, let’s get moving . . . there’s stuff to do, and you’re already behind.”
It might have started hours earlier, robbing you of rest. (Ever notice how much worse everything seems in the middle of the night?) It sets the tone for the entire day. Instead of feeling energized about the day, you just want to grab a spoon and a carton of Ben & Jerry’s for breakfast.
It reminds me of visiting an amusement park on the busiest day of summer. You pay a ton of money to spend the day and have a good time. But it’s hot – and you’re hungry – and it’s crowded – and the lines are long – and your kids are whining – and it’s chaotic. At the end of the day, you’re more exhausted than energized.
Not a great way to start your day.
You might not experience this often. Or maybe it’s a daily occurrence for you.
But we’ve all been there – and it doesn’t feel good.
Solutions that Don’t Solve Anything
When we’re overwhelmed with things to do, it’s hard to know where to start. As soon as we pick one thing to work on, everything else on the list starts yelling for our attention. It’s hard to concentrate because of the noise inside our heads.
When that happens, most of us use one of three common strategies:
We pick something really simple and short to do.
It might not be very important, but it gives us a quick check-mark (and a dopamine rush). So we’re focusing on quantity, trying to get through as many things as possible so our list gets shorter. (Have you ever accomplished something that wasn’t on your list, and added it so you could check it off?)
We pick something important but get distracted when it becomes hard.
We have great intentions; but when we get stuck, we check our email or social media. It makes us feel better, but we have to mentally ramp back up to the task. That’s tough because we’re moving toward pain – so the task seems even worse than it did before.
We use willpower to get stuff done.
It feels like we should just have self-discipline, so we need to “just do it.” That’s a problem because we have a limited amount of willpower each day. In their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
Those strategies might work for a while, but they’re not sustainable. Why?
Because they ignore how our brains work.
The Science of Paying Attention
It’s easy to assume that high-performing people are just better thinkers than low-performing people. Their brains just work differently, so the rest of us are doomed to lesser things.
But it’s not true.
Research has shown that our brains are surprisingly similar. Most people have roughly the same amount of storage available – and it’s massive. We can hang onto an amazing amount of information.
But we all have a very small workspace.
That workspace is where we focus our attention. If there are too many things on our workspace, we lose our ability to pay attention.
Think of it as a desk in your office. It’s designed to be your “work” space, not your “storage” space. It’s where you get work done.
When that desk has piles everywhere, it’s hard to concentrate. There are too many things to catch our eye when the current task gets hard.
You might say, “Yeah, I have a messy desk – but I know exactly where everything is.” That’s great. But that’s treating your desk as a storage place instead of a workspace.
The problem with a messy desk isn’t the clutter; it’s the potential for distraction.
I get it. I’ve always had a messy workspace, surrounded by a messy office. I used to have signs that said, “A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind” and “Creative minds are rarely tidy.”
But it’s just an excuse. If I want to focus, I almost always go to a different location so I’m not distracted.
Our mental workspace is the same way. It’s a small desk to get something done, not to store a bunch of other stuff.
What’s the solution? You need to hire a bouncer.
Why You Need a Bouncer
Dr. Edward Vogel is a researcher at the University of Chicago and is an expert in attention. He says that our minds are amazing, but it can only focus on a small amount of info from your environment at any given time. There are hundreds of things competing for that tiny workspace.
His suggestion: We need to create a bouncer to keep the non-important information off the workspace.
A high-end nightclub hires a bouncer who stands by the entrance. That person has the guest list of VIP’s that have been invited. His or her job is to allow only the invited guests in, and to turn everyone else away – no matter how loud or insistent or convincing they might be.
Why do we need a mental bouncer? To keep everything off our workspace except what’s most critical at any given time.
Here’s what’s even more interesting:
High-performers, instead of holding lots of information in mind, hold far less. They’re good at taking complex information and honing in on what the most relevant/critical pieces are.
Low-performers try to bring more info than they can effectively manage at one time.
The difference is the bouncer’s effectiveness because it allows us to achieve complex goals in the middle of all the other distractions.
Triage Your Tasks
Where do we get a bouncer? We create one.
A bouncer is created when we become crystal clear on our most important goals. These include the things that are important, but not urgent – the things that are “mission critical” in your job and your personal life.
There are also what author Jim Collins
When we’re clear on our BHAGs, it determines who’s on the “guest list.” We give that list to the bouncer, who then determines which activities are relevant toward those goals, and which are irrelevant.
Maybe you want to start a business, run a marathon, write a novel or pay off your mortgage. From where you are right now, the goal seems out of reach. But you also know that if you achieve that goal, everything would be different:
- Once you started your business, you could quit your dead-end job.
- Once you run a marathon, you’ll be healthier than you’ve ever been.
- Once you write and publish a novel, you can work as an author.
- Once you pay off your mortgage, you’ll have financial freedom.
The hard part is that those goals aren’t urgent, so it’s easy to postpone the next step until tomorrow. But remember the words of Goethe: Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.
Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.
Take some time today to triage your to-do list. What are the top seven tasks that will have the highest payoff if you did them? Circle them, and make them the first things you do during the day.
Then write down your BHAG. What is something that would make a huge difference in your life if you actually achieved it? Now go through your to-do list and circle every task that is directly related to that big goal.
If you don’t find anything, decide what the next step should be that will move you forward toward achieving it. Put it on the guest list as the #1 VIP, and do it first thing in your day.
What will happen? You’ll start your day energized because you didn’t just fight your way through your to-do list. You moved the needle on the things that matter most.