The human brain consumes about 20% of the energy your body produces. It is the most energy demanding organ you have in your body. It shouldn’t be surprising that when tasked with mental challenges the brain consumes more energy than when it is resting. Now think about how you feel at the end of a day— do you feel physically and mentally drained? If you answered “yes” you might be interested to know that smart people actually exhibit less brain activity than other people. Put a little differently, they require less energy to solve problems.
Although there are several theories as to why smart people use less brain power, the prevailing thought is that smart people are better able to focus on important information while quickly discarding unimportant information. On one hand, some of these people have really good brains, on the other hand, they often engage the world differently than most people… they focus first to understand what they are facing… then act. Most people muddle into action before really understanding what is going on, thus wasting mental energy as they try to solve poorly understood challenges. So, can we work smarter?
There is a concept in physics that looks at signal to noise ratios. It’s a fancy way of saying that when we are faced with a task (signal) there are also things that distract us from seeing what we need to understand to successfully solve the challenge (noise). The more signal we can see clearly, the better we understand what is going on, leading to success; however, if there is more noise than signal, we are unlikely to clearly see what we are facing and our likelihood of successfully solving the challenge is greatly reduced. Focus is key to identifying signal. Spotting signal allows us to use less brain power because we aren’t distracted by unimportant things.
At this point, we might start to see that we have two situations where focus is important… the first is in avoiding distractions in a general sense; and the second is when we are faced with an unexpected challenge in the course of a day and knowing how to tackle it. So let’s look at the first situation… being productive during the day.
Have you ever known a person who just seems to get so much done in the course of a day? Day in and day out they are productive. Interestingly, they seem to be happy much of the time. How do they do it? People who become successful set goals. For example, suppose you want to increase your business by 10 clients in the month. Successful people make a list of the things they need to do to generate 10 new clients… they stick to the list and avoid distractions. You need to understand that distractions are “time sucks.” You have a limited amount of time, exactly 1440 minutes in a day. Every distraction steals minutes that you will not get back. Most people haven’t figured out that most of their success comes from a handful of behaviors. They go about the day in a defocused way wasting a few minutes here and a few minutes there without realizing that if they focused on the handful of behaviors that make them successful more would have been accomplished.
Successful people have learned that 20% of their efforts account for 80% of their successes. It’s true. These people understand that time management is the key to success and they allocate their efforts to the 20% of things that will accomplish 80% of their goals for the day. This might sound simple, but most people do not do it. Some people try to stay focused by writing down a bunch of things on a list. It’s a start, but remember, 80% of the things on the list might keep you busy, but they probably aren’t that important. So we need to figure out the 20% of the items on the list that move us toward accomplishing the majority of our goals, and if possible delegate the remaining 80% of the items that will only account for 20% of the success to someone else when possible. If done diligently, you will suddenly find yourself with extra time, because you are focusing on high return activities.
This brings us to the second aspect of list making that is important— prioritization. It isn’t good enough just to write down a bunch of things on paper and tell yourself to get them done. Some things on the list are more important than other things AND some things are going to be more difficult to complete. Here in comes the second aspect of focus— getting specific. Prioritizing is the act of balancing what must be done vs what you would like to get done. When you prioritize the list, think about your goals for the day, for the week, for the month. Are the things on the list in alignment with what your job needs you to do and the 20% of high return activities? If you are running a company, is the list comprised of things you need to accomplish to be effective? You need to rank them to determine where to start. Simply write the number 1 next to the most important task on the list that MUST be done; then write the number 2 next to the second most important task that MUST be done; continue the process until all items have been ranked. Don’t confuse wanting something done with something that must be done. Give extra weight to the 20 % of high return activities.
As you look at the list, you will notice some items are going to be more difficult to address, but stick to the prioritization you have written. There are strategies to facilitate solving specific tasks more effectively, but right now we just want to keep you on track. I’ll make a guess right now that when you look at your list of priorities, the top 20% of the items will account for 80% of your success.
