Free To Focus- A Total Productivity System To Achieve More By Doing Less - Michael Hyatt

 Contents

Cover 1

Endorsements 2

Title Page 7

Copyright Page 8

Stepping into Focus 11

STEP 1 STOP

1. FORMULATE: Decide What You Want 25

2. EVALUATE: Determine Your Course 43

3. REJUVENATE: Reenergize Your Mind and Body 65

STEP 2 CUT

4. ELIMINATE: Flex Your “No” Muscle 91

5. AUTOMATE: Subtract Yourself from the Equation 115

6. DELEGATE: Clone Yourself—or Better 137

STEP 3 ACT

7. CONSOLIDATE: Plan Your Ideal Week 161

8. DESIGNATE: Prioritize Your Tasks 183

9. ACTIVATE: Beat Interruptions and Distractions 205

Put Your Focus to Work 223

Acknowledgments 229

Notes 233

Index 245

About the Author 251 

Stepping into Focus

What will your life have been, in the end, but the sum total of everything you spent it

focusing on? - OLIVER BURKEMAN

I think I’m having a heart attack!” Of all ways to end a relaxing dinner, this is among the worst.I was a publishing executive in Manhattan on business. A colleague and I were finishing a delicious meal after a busy day when the chest pain began. I didn’t want to concern my friend or embarrass myself, so I ignored it for a while, hoping it would pass. It didn’t. I smiled and laughed but heard less and less of what my friend was saying. I was beginning to panic but tried to keep up appearances. The pain intensified. The room closed in. Finally, I just blurted it out.My friend jumped into action. He paid our bill, hailed a cab, and rushed me to the nearest hospital. After some preliminary tests, the doctor reported that all my vitals were fine. I wasn’t having a heart attack after all. After a thorough checkup, my primary care physician didn’t find any problems either.

I was okay! Except I wasn’t. I found myself back in the hospital two more times over the next year. Each of these events turned out exactly like the first.Doctors kept telling me my heart was good, but I knew something was wrong.

In desperation, I made an appointment with one of the top cardiologists in Nashville, where I live. He ran me through a battery of tests and called me into his office as soon as the results came in. “Michael, your heart is fine,” he said. “In fact, you’re in great shape. Your problem is twofold: acid reflux . . .and stress.” He said a third of the people he sees for chest pains actually suffer from acid reflux, and most are neck-deep in stress. “Stress is something you need to address,” he warned me. “If you don’t make this a priority, you could be back in here with a real heart problem.”I was exactly like the overworked, overstressed people he told me about.

Work had been insane for as long as I could remember. It never seemed to slow down. At the time I was leading a division in my company, attempting a near-impossible turnaround (more on that later). I already had more priorities than I could count. I was being pulled a hundred different directions. I was the center of every process. I got every phone call, every email, every text. I was on duty 24/7 in a nonstop whirlwind of projects, meetings, and tasks—not to mention emergencies, interruptions, and distractions. My family was weary,my energy and enthusiasm were waning, and now my health was suffering.Something had to give.

Life in the Distraction Economy

My problem back then was doing too much—mostly by myself. Later I realized focusing on everything means focusing on nothing. It’s almost impossible to accomplish anything significant when you’re racing through an endless litany of tasks and emergencies. And yet this is how many of us spend our days, weeks, months, years—sometimes, our entire lives.

We should know better by now. We’ve been doing business in the so-called Information Economy for decades. In 1969 and 1970 Johns Hopkins University and the Brookings Institution sponsored a series of conferences on the impact of information technology. One speaker, Herbert Simon, was a Carnegie Mellon professor of computer science and psychology who later won a Nobel for his work in economics. In his presentation, he warned that the growth of information could become a burden. Why? “Information consumes the attention of its recipients,” he explained, and “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”1I

nformation is no longer scarce. But attention is. In fact, in a world where information is freely available, focus becomes one of the most valuable commodities in the workplace. But for most of us, work is the hardest place to find it. The truth is we live and labor in the Distraction Economy. As journalist Oliver Burkeman says, “Your attention is being spammed all daylong.”2 And stemming the flow of inputs and interruptions can seem impossible.

Consider email. Collectively, we send over two hundred million emails every minute.3 Professionals start the day hundreds deep with hundreds more on the way.4 But don’t stop there. Toss in the data feeds, phone calls, texts,drop-in visits, instant messages, nonstop meetings, and surprise problems that flood our phones, computers, tablets, and workplaces. Research shows we get interrupted or distracted every three minutes on average.5 “Even though digital technology has led to significant productivity increases,” says Rachel Emma Silverman of the Wall Street Journal, “the modern workday seems custom-built to destroy individual focus.”6 We’ve all experienced it. Our devices, apps, and tools make us think we’re saving time, being hyper productive. In reality most of us just jam our day with the buzz and grind of low-value activity. We don’t invest our time in big and important projects. Instead, we’re tyrannized by tiny tasks. One pair of......... 

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