Unfocused Focus

Ever have a meeting about a meeting or make a plan to make a plan? Do you ever find yourself having the same conversations with people time and again going over the procedures of how to move forward but you always end up in the same position you were in before even opening your mouth? Why do we so often make grandiose plans but fail to implement or even fulfill half of the promise of our visions? Are we setting our sights too high? Are we simply incapable of achieving the goals of our plans? Are we not applying the necessary effort while working through the tasks to conquer the projects? I think these are many of the reasons why we fail to achieve many of our goals but I believe the main reason we fail to follow through comes down to mismanagement.

No, I’m not only talking about the supervisors or managers of us in our work lives, I am also talking about our own ability to manage ourselves. Our lives, both at work and at home, have simply become overwhelmed by too many multitasking opportunities. We are focused, but unfocused at the same time. We are trying to do too many things at once while accomplishing nothing. We are effectively in a constant state of paralysis. Our attention is being pulled in so many directions, we cannot move forward without pulling something else backwards in our lives.

Our single person isn’t enough to continually push the amount of stuff in our lives forward at once. So, we live a life of unfocused focus. At work, we are responsible for many things because as Americans, we pride ourselves on efficiency and hard work. At home, we over subscribe our time because we have so many irons in the fire. While we focus on one thing, something else is falling behind. We switch our focus to correct that and something else lags. We just cannot catch up. It eventually leads to an overwhelming situation where we feel that no matter what we do, we just cannot keep up, get out, or complete a project.

As we manage ourselves, we must decide what we can do. We must decide how thin to stretch our time, our resources, and our energy. Our managers at work must also do the same. If we are stretched beyond our capabilities, we end up where a lot of us are today… overwhelmed and paralyzed. So, we have meetings to have a meeting in an effort to fix a certain situation. We make a plan to have a plan so that we can push forward something that is dragging behind. We continually have the same conversations over and over again because our focus has been split into a hundred different directions. It seems as if we are reinventing the wheel over and over again.

At some point in time, we should put a stake into the ground and announce that we are pushed as far as we can go. There is a finite amount of energy and time in our everyday lives. We must recognize that as an individual and our supervisors must also realize that. If our lives are allowed to continue down this path, a breaking point will be discovered and over time, everything will come crashing down. Rather than living in a state of paralysis, we will enter a situation of freefalling disaster. The pressures of everything around us that we were capable of holding at bay will crush us and we will not be able to reverse the momentum.

We need to regain our focus and whittle down the amount of things we are undertaking in our lives. We should focus our efforts on returning to a more minimal state of living and recover some of our time at home. Our managers at work must realize that a “Jack of all trades” is not better than an expert… or king of the trade. We can still be efficient and not be responsible for umpteen different tasks at once. Focused worker attention is more efficient and also more productive. Focused home life allows for a more stable household and creates better relationships.

But, this is America… we are the “go go” society. We want to be number one and the price we pay to be number one may just not be worth it. If we sacrifice ourselves and our identity to achieve so-called prosperity aren’t we really the losers?