Attention Management – Distractions, Part 1

Most of us do a poor job of managing our time - whoops, that's managing our priorities. None of us actually manage time, right? Time can't be managed. But what we DO with our time we CAN manage. One way we manage our priorities is we choose to schedule those things that we believe are in line with our priorities. An example of that is putting meetings on our calendars that help us accomplish our projects and responsibilities. Makes sense. When we schedule a meeting, we're saying, this is worthy of my attention. We're managing what we attend to, we're managing our attention. But unfortunately many of us, no matter how good we are at scheduling those things to which we wish to attend, also are terrible at managing those things that distract us from our priorities. But if we're going to have plenty of time for what we want to accomplish, we better not only schedule things well, but we ought to avoid distractions. And most of us are terrible at that. This cast recommends specific actions to take to reduce the pain of distractions on our effectiveness.