Seven Career Mindset Shifts For A Turbulent World: Day 4: Shift 3-The Detail

The back-story? That's here.

•  Shift 3: From added communication channels to selection and discrimination.

1. For our grandparents: the excitement and usefulness of a land-line.
2. For our parents: the excitement and usefulness of the cell phone and e-mail.
3. For us: the awful dawning of data over-load and the need to discriminate on input channels.

In the world of our grandparents, thinking time was built in. Waiting for a train. At your desk. Even driving your car. Certainly in the evening. In that world, kids got bored and very good for them it was; it forced them to kick-start that imagination which would help them in adult Life.

In The New World of Work there are so many potential intrusions on our time, it is tougher and tougher to be at our best and deliver of our best: it is harder and harder to be in our peak state of concentration, thinking, focus and creativity. But the key is to notice that word 'potential': we don't have to allow so many forms of communication to us that we have no time to communicate with ourselves. Gardeners who work with an iPod in their ears are not 'at one' with the garden, executives who only see the world through the screen of a Blackberry run the real risk of losing perspective in every sense and children who have only experienced games via a console have missed out on the essential inter-personal skills of being in a gang and bartering for leadership. It is fortunate that John and Paul did not have to waste any time discussing which great new iApps they had discovered and down-loaded.

Consider:

1. Consider unplugging more: just switch it all off. Chill, read, cook and converse.
2. Get off the grid more. Back into nature. Camp, climb, canoe and create.
3. Batch process e-mail. Deal with it then leave it for an hour or so.
4. Re-set expectations with bosses and clients about response times.
5. Re-configure the way you work to reduce the number of channels you need to check, manage and even contribute to.
6. Get out of your head more often: chop wood, carry water, smell the roses.
7. Notice how easily we become addicted to the distraction. However fascinating our work, our eye and our mind is trained by evolution to flicker somewhere else.
8. Create a work area which is low on distraction. At work, go hide in a meeting room on another floor. At home, explain to the kids your new approach.
9. Get proactive again. You're in control. Not the interrupts.
10. The greatest asset you have to offer throughout your career is the quality of your thinking. Protect it like gold bullion.