In our new world where attention is currency and the most valuable companies in the world have figured out how to capture greater proportions of your time, your own focus and process awareness are more important than ever. Vats of ink have been spilled about the discipline of process over outcome and the benefits to goal achievement, we are more distracted than ever.
You feel like if you don’t read everything you will miss out. Then you do choose to read everything or get to inbox zero and suddenly you feel don’t accomplished, you feel empty. Your retention of that information is abominably low and so it leaves you at the point of despair? These are the days and the moments, that I come back to the process. If you are not furthering your own mission and purpose, what are you doing?
As James Courrier of NFX - The Psychology of Focus puts it, when you match high energy with extreme focus, you find your passion. For me, the days where I follow my process are not only most impactful, and often, productive days I have, they also help prime my awareness for my passion. Waking up early, spending at least one hour phone-free, praying, reading a book, journaling on Emote, stretching are all intended to center myself and re-prioritize what matters most. On days where I’ve followed that process, I walk into my work a clear idea of what I need to accomplish and the resolve to refrain from the next email or the shared article over text. Its these days where I feel like my mind is fortified, retaining the purpose of why I work, what matters and how to achieve it. I bring the focus, the energy and I attack with passion. The outcome is the byproduct.
I often find that I can do my deepest creative work before lunch (writing blog posts, articles, making software design decisions) and I’m most reflexive after lunch and after dinner (long conversations and the blocking and tackling of email communication). In an ideal daily structure, my process looks like this:
Early Morning: Me Time, Get Centered
Morning: Creative, Heads down, Focus work
Afternoon: Calls, conversations, meetings, discussions
Evening: Blocking and Tackling
As I launch into my day, following this daily architecture, I’m ready and mentally prepared for whatever outcome it yields. It’s the focus on the process that we can control. On a presidential election week, its more important than ever to remember to control and set your own process as the outcome in life is uncontrollable.