In my posts earlier, I have shared with you some of the good tools I have found for focusing our time. I have especially liked the Dean Jackson video on Focus Finder. The methods he uses are simple yet profound. The key thing is that you have to ensure you are able to ensure you are able to pull out time for thinking activities.

Since we have so many things prompting us and drawing attention to them, getting dedicated thinking time is almost a rarity even for me. The challenge is that the brain has got so used to the idea of getting disturbed, that if you keep your phone away to concentrate on some activity, you actually feel guilty and end up seeing the phone just to ensure that you have not received an urgent call. The next off course is email. You dig into one and by the time you finish that there’s another one demanding your attention.

So inspite of so called success with some of the tools which have helped me, I have not yet been able to take maximum benefit out of the thinking process.

So I am working out to see how I can make thinking time a habit using the process suggested by B.J.Fogg in his book Tiny Habits. To make it useful I have also tried to incorporate a system of identifying the next problem to be solved in advance so that when I do get time to think, my brain is not going helper skelter, trying to figure out what needs to be done.

So yesterday when I tried solving one problem, I identified problems which are two layered below it. Meaning if don’t solve those problems, the problem I was trying to solve yesterday will not get solved. Therefore even though I did not solve the problem completely, the ideas that came to me during the thinking time, gave me some items to focus on to solve, before coming back to that problem.

Today since I did not have to think in terms of the problem to be solved, the moment I focused on the problem, my mind went into flow quickly before the door bell rang and disturbed me. But in that short time, with the problem to be solved, defined in advance, my brain was getting into action faster and came up with ideas much faster. If this can work, then I may not have the most elegant solutions immediately but would have started moving faster to solve challenges.

Please see if this works for you and let me know your views.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!