The Power of Focus: Why Doing Less Leads to Greater Results
Understanding the benefits of focused work can help counter the problem of interruptions. Business and corporate cultures often praise the concept of being “fast-paced”, but this usually means “chaotic and distracted”. Modern society thrives on constant distractions, and maintaining focus is becoming a lost art. This lack of focus influences our individual actions and behaviors as well as team and company environments.
The Problem: Working on Too Many Things at Once
Working on too many things at once.
Examine the picture below and imagine it is a top-down view of a map. The distance from start to finish is exactly the same regardless of the route you take. However, will it take the same amount of time to travel from start to finish?
Before you answer…
What is your answer, based on immediate reaction?
Why did you answer this way?
Now let’s look at the real answer.
Assuming the exact same speed, it would take the same amount of time to travel from start to finish, regardless of the route taken.
Here is the caveat: how many scenarios from real life can you think of where that happens? Imagine the image was two routes of physical roads that can be travelled by car. There is no way a vehicle can travel at the same speed through both routes. Why? Because it has to slow down before every turn.
Now imagine the routes were trails that people could bike or run on. The same limitation applies. In order to make a safe turn a runner or cyclist has to slow down and then accelerate again. The more turns the route has, more reasons to slow down and then accelerate again. The closer the turns to each other, the less opportunity for acceleration and reaching top speed.
Our mind works the same way.
The Research: Why Focus Matters
Several studies have investigated the cognitive processes involved in task switching, highlighting the need for both “ramp-up” and “ramp-down” time when changing contexts:
- Residual Switch Costs: Research by Rogers and Monsell (1995) demonstrated that even with ample preparation time, individuals experience “residual” switch costs—delays that persist when switching tasks. This suggests that certain reconfiguration processes can only be completed after the new task begins, indicating a necessary ramp-up period to achieve optimal performance.
University of New Mexico - Executive Control in Task Switching: Studies have shown that task alternation incurs time costs that increase with rule complexity but decrease with task cuing. These findings support models of executive control involving goal-shifting and rule-activation stages, which require time to disengage from one task (ramp-down) and engage in another (ramp-up).
American Psychological Association - Neural Activation Patterns: Neuroimaging research indicates that task switching activates multiple brain regions, including the prefrontal cortex and parietal lobes. The involvement of these areas underscores the cognitive effort required to shift attention and reconfigure task sets, necessitating time to ramp up to full efficiency in the new task.
Frontiers
Collectively, these studies highlight that the human brain requires time to effectively transition between tasks, involving both disengagement from the previous task and engagement with the new one. This transition period is crucial for maintaining performance quality and minimizing errors during task switching.
The principle: Focus Beats Interruptions
Focused work on 1 thing beats partial work on many things
Accomplishing 1 thing beats working on 5 things
Doing more can become: doing less
Finishing beats starting
When we are fully focused on a single effort the chances of us: a) Doing a better job; b) Finishing the effort, increase greatly.
When we spread ourselves thin and work on multiple things at once, it is more chaotic, disorganized, stressful, and we often end up being busy but producing little. This can lead to fewer and smaller accomplishments.
There is an emotional boost to look back on a day and see that you accomplished something. It is very different from looking back on a day full of activities but nothing to show for.
In our distracted environment, it can be more natural for us to start new tasks, but to finish fewer of them. When you think about it – is there any value in starting an effort and stopping when it is 50% done? Was there any value in accomplishing half of it, or was that a wasted effort and time?
Does your culture lack focus?
Hire a Fractional CTO to work with your leaders and teams, to help create a culture of focus?
The Application: Implementing Focused Work
This principle can be applied widely.
Individual Work
How you structure your own personal day, regardless of your occupation, title, role, and responsibilities.
Team Work
In my experience, in software development it is very common for engineering teams to be working on multiple features at once. I mention a specific example in this article, where a small team of 3 engineers typically work on 3-4 features at the same time. There is a lot of context switching in such an environment, which leads to less than optimal results
Company Work
Have you ever worked at a software company, which changed direction and priorities often? What was the result?
- Sunk costs
- Technical debt
- Lack of direction
- Frustrated teams
- Lack of delivered features
Do any of these sound familiar?
This is not to say that a company should never pivot or change direction. There are definitely times when this is necessary. However, when this is the typical behavior the end result can be detrimental.
The Requirement: Building Focus at Every Level
So what is necessary to achieve more work flow and focus, whether on an individual, team, or company level? I see 3 components:
1) Awareness
First, one has to be aware of their behavior and work patterns. You cannot work on a problem you don’t know that you have. Therefore, recognizing how I, my team, or my company focuses (or not) when doing work is the first step.
2) Intentionality
Once we have become aware of the current work patterns the next step is to become intentional in our work day. This means creating an intentional mindset to remain focused and taking some action. Removal of distractions is one example: silencing phones, messages, notifications, etc. Creating a distraction free environment and schedule, or anything else that would allow for focused and uninterrupted work, would go a long way.
3) Discipline
Finally, without self discipline the previous two steps will yield little value. It will take mental energy, effort, and discipline to remain committed to a focused type of work. The world and everything around us will keep bombarding us with more distractions and reasons to be interrupted. However, self-discipline will be necessary to guard against these distractions and follow through with what we have set out to do.