The Most Precious Asset: Your Attention

The quality of concentration

Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen master and founder of Plum Village, a Buddhist monastery in France that we frequently visit, teaches mindfulness. Mindfulness is the ability to be fully present in what you are doing; to pay attention to every little detail. If you are drinking a cup of tea, you are completely aware of each sip, the temperature of the water, the smell of the tea and the texture of the cup. If you take a bite from a cookie, you taste every little bit of it, savoring it in your mouth.

The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. – Thich Nhat Hanh

You could say that with mindfulness, your time and attention are one hundred percent aligned. If you spend time on something – for example, on a conversation with your team member – your attention is focused on that conversation as well. And being mindful means you don’t let yourself get distracted by an email that pops up on your screen, or by a ringing phone.

According to research by David Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, productivity is actually hindered when people try to accomplish two things (or more) at once. Meyer reports that people who switch back and forth between tasks, like working on a project and checking emails, may spend up to 50% more time on those tasks than if they work on them separately, completing one before starting the other.

The most effective way to use your most precious asset – your attention – is to combine it with your time. Becoming a master in creating undisturbed moments that let you concentrate on what you want to accomplish is invaluable for good management.

Why attention is such a precious asset

In the current knowledge intensive economy, the two most important natural assets you can make use of are your time and your attention.

First of all, you can decide whether or not to spend time on something, and during this time you can display your skills, knowledge and expertise. And alongside spending your time, you can decide to pay attention to something. Think of attention as a highlighter. As you read through a section of text in a book, the highlighted parts stand out, helping you focus on that area. Attention enables you to ‘tune out’ information, sensations and perceptions that are not relevant at a given moment, and instead focus your energy on what is important.

My neighbour in Spain is a carpenter. For him, carpentry seems easy. If he wants to make a new chair, he devotes his time to that task. And then he directs his attention to the pieces of wood, the sharp saw and the chisel. If he didn’t align his time and attention, he would probably have an unstable chair and be missing a couple of fingers.

But for you and me, who spend a lot of time staring at computer screens and dealing with endless interruptions and distractions, it doesn’t seem that simple to keep hold attention on the task at hand.

The constant fight for your attention

The following is not news. The volume of external stimuli we process increases every day. Count the number of traffic signs on the road, items in a store, channels on your TV, search results from Google, conversations with colleagues, and emails in your inbox. Everyone and everything is constantly screaming and fighting for your attention. On how many devices can you now receive emails? And how many of these do you use? With my email hooked up to my iPad, phone and laptop, I count three.

Did you know that by default most email clients check the server for new messages at least once every five minutes? And given how prolifically we communicate, chances are that it will find a new message every time it checks the server. That means a whopping 120 distractions during a 10 hour workday – only from email.

Add to this all the other distractions vying for your attention – such as reports, meeting minutes, market shares, customer data, PR campaigns, CVs, product information, and P&Ls, to name just a few – and you begin to realise you need to build strong walls to protect yourself from distraction.

Consider this: when an accident happens, it is most often due to a misalignment between time and attention. Driving a car (time) + having a fight on the phone (attention) = crash!

How many ‘crashes’ have you experienced in your business so far due to this phenomenon? And what can you start doing as of today to protect your concentration?