Don’t be a butterfly, hit the big tasks with a 20-minute focus

I’m four years old. It’s early spring and I’m wearing those ladybird wellies you could get from Woolies. My dad is in the garden with his cabbages and I’m helping. Well, watching. OK, being a pain. Dad is moaning because there are holes in his cabbages.

The holes are hard to stop because instead of eating the whole cabbage, the cabbage butterflies fly around taking nibbles from different cabbages. Little tinkers! Although that’s not what Dad calls them.

This is what we do at work. Unfocused, yet ‘busy’. Busy creating lots of holes (light touches) and not doing the big stuff that makes the difference. We move from reading a pdf to seeing a notification and reading an email, to messaging a colleague, to answering the phone – doing the small and ignoring the big. We’re procrastinating on the 20% of tasks that will deliver 80% of the difference because those tasks are tricky, and make us feel like we’re not getting as much done.

We all have a procrastinating self. We don’t like that person. They do the little things when the big stuff should be done, and they do the big stuff when they are exhausted at the end of the day.

When that person has a big task to do, their procrastination radar pops up from the top of their head looking for anything else to do, so that they don’t have to do the task at hand. “Aha, Bob, we haven’t talked about health and safety in years. Let’s do it now.”

Be aware of that radar operator: they are responsible for unfinished projects, missed promotions and other workplace regrets.

How to stop it? Well, we can definitely focus for 20 minutes. Proven research tells us this. The rest is up to you. You were born with a brain that can focus for 20 minutes, but it is you that accepts the distractions. Stop. The better your ability to focus the more productive and successful you will be.

So identify that big task that needs doing, and if you can do nothing else, put aside 20 minutes per day to focus on it. That is all I am asking. Pick a time when you feel most productive, close your email, unplug your phone and ignore everything else for 4% of the day. You’ll soon make headway.

A 20-minute session every day for five days is 100 minutes. An hour and 40 minutes each week on the stuff you are currently not getting to will really make an impact.

Think of the mountains you could move!