Stay Focused: Get More Done in Less Time

Stay focused. It’s easy to say, but harder to do. Anybody who’s been in sales has probably been in a situation where you’ve been in a room with someone and you’re looking at them and having a conversation with them. But they’re looking around the room. They’re looking at things. People are buzzing them on the phone. They’re like, “excuse me.” They’re taking the call and you’re sitting there thinking, “why am I here? Why am I doing this?” So other people maintaining focus (or not) will give you a really good idea of where you stand with them.

David: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. We are back once again. Jay McFarland, and I will discuss how to stay focused in your day. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: It’s so good to be here, David. And I know that focus is something that everybody’s working on. One of the reasons I know this is all of the technology companies are building focus tools into their devices.

We must want this because I can now tell my phone, no I’m focused on this and it gives me different screens for that particular time so that I can stay focused in on this. So we must all want to be able to focus better. And the question is, how do we achieve that?

David: Yeah. Especially when there are other technology companies that are trying to get you to stay focused on them.

Right? You gave a great example. I noticed that too, on my phone, there’s the new focus button. And I like that idea, but in the meantime, nearly every social media platform is designed to steal your focus, to derail you from what it is that you wanted to do today in favor of what they would like to have you do today, which is to scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, and then scroll some more.

So we do have technology that is working for us, and we have technology that is working against us. But last time when we were talking about the idea of building proactively, I think these things tie together. As we’re building proactively, we recognize that it does require us to stay focused day-to-day.

And so in order to do that, we have to say, okay, how are we going to make it happen? Particularly with all sorts of forces, potentially conspiring against us.

Jay: Yeah. I love that point, that on the one hand tech is trying to help us stay focused, and then everything else in the world, I’m like, “squirrel!” You know, squirrel there’s something new and it’s not just social media who’s trying to distract you. It’s the employees who want your time, the customers who call up because they don’t know your schedule. They just know they have a question, right? So they’re calling you. So how do you go about building some semblance of focus throughout your day with all of these distractions that are coming in constantly?

David: Well, from my standpoint, I think we need to decide at the beginning of the day, as early as possible, what really needs to happen today? Because that’ll help us to determine where our focus needs to be. What is it that actually has to get done? What has to happen? What do you have to do versus what do other people in your organization have to do?

So if you own the organization, you’re going to have to determine what you’re doing and what they need to stay focused on. And how are you going to avoid distraction? Lots of people have, or had, open door policies when people were working together. Do I have my door open? Do I have my door closed?

I liked the idea of having an open-door policy. So for many years in my business, I did. But unfortunately, that sometimes pr