Hone Your Craft as a Biblical Scholar
The folks at Freedom have a helpful tutorial about “how to be more productive in the afternoon.” The same principles, though, will apply also to the mornings or whenever one’s preferred time is for focused work.
For additional discussion of Freedom, the significance of focus, and the importance of guarding it, see Focus—there’s an app for that. For more information or to try Freedom, see the Freedom website.
For various reasons, focus can be difficult in a whole host of contexts—at work, at home, or during recreation. One contemporary culprit that can all too easily hamper efforts to “lose” oneself in the “play” of the real world are the digital devices and media with which some of us are constantly surrounded. As a helpful set of “training wheels” to foster better focus amid such distractions, enter Freedom.
For a quick overview of how to configure and begin using Freedom, see the clip below.
For additional discussion of the significance of focus and concentration, and (especially Internet-enabled) humans’ susceptibility to distraction, see Better attention than a goldfish, Eliminating distractions, Hyatt’s interview with Newport, Productivity assessment, Skills to cultivate for better work, Staying focused, Tips for better focus.
The Dropbox blog has a short essay on the downsides of trying to multitask. Rather than multitasking,
deep and singular focus is just what the doctor ordered, but in our hyper-connected world, it isn’t always easy…. You could chuck all your gadgets and move to the woods, but luckily you don’t need to get that drastic. Experts say you can begin to retrain your brain and take advantage of deep focus by concentrating on one thing at a time, managing your use of technology, and reframing the “instant-response” expectations of your colleagues—and yourself.
For the rest of the post and a handful of practical suggestions about taking steps in this direction, see the original post on the Dropbox blog.
Focus is now the lifeblood of this economy.
Why? Because focus is rare and distraction abundant. As Hyatt comments,
Even when we think we are focusing, we usually aren’t. When we work intensely on one problem but do quick “check backs” on email, social media, and the like during breaks, we run into the problem of “attention residue.” Those things come back with us when we return to our core work and make it harder to focus on our most important tasks.
For the balance of Hyatt’s summation of the interview, see his blog. Or, for the full interview, see the recording below:
As part of Michael Hyatt’s Free to Focus resource set, he’s made available three treat the significance for productivity of adequate, quality sleep:
Shawn Stevenson’s core business certainly falls in an area where probably few biblical scholars will care to follow. But some of the implications of the expertise that he has for broader productivity applications may indeed prove informative and helpful.
To view or download these resources, see the Free to Focus website.
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Michael Hyatt has a helpful discussion of 10 tips for enabling better focus. For me, suggestions 5 (“Take email … software offline.”) and 6 (“Put on music that helps facilitates concentration.”) have tended to prove particularly helpful.
For Michael’s discussion of these tips and the other 8 he provides, see his original post.
