In her article in the Harvard Business Review1, Maura Thomas quotes preeminent 19th century psychologist, William James, “My experience is what I agree to attend to.”
Thomas’ angle on this is, “Your attention determines the experiences you have, and the experiences you have determine the life you live. Or said another way: you must control your attention to control your life.”
“Attention management is… the ability to recognize when your attention is being stolen (or has the potential to be stolen) and to instead keep it focused on the activities you choose.”
Most executives have an internal assumption that anyone on the outside looking in doesn’t understand the impossible distractions or uncontrollable conflicting challenges that constantly but haphazardly arise. They may not be always in a panic, but they regularly are navigating low-grade frustration. Their best impact seems regularly sabotaged by real but ancillary issues. As Thomas puts it, “too much ‘trees’ and not enough ‘forest.’”
“So if your attention continues getting diverted, and email, meetings, and ‘firefighting’ consume your days, pretty soon weeks or months will have gone by and your life becomes full of the “experiences” you never really intended to have.” – M. Thomas
Who your God is, is not merely a result of chance. It is a result of design – your own design. What gets rewarded gets repeated. What gets focused on gets completed.
If your God is who or what you trust (see Commandment #1), then what you are regularly turning to in times of challenge is approaching the place or rank of your God.
John “Shrek” McPhee, the renown delta force combatant, indicated they often won in critical battle settings because they had so effectively trained, repeating again and again the same battle procedures. Under pressure they instinctively lived their training.
Under pressure, when responding to business conflicts, fires, opportunities, or distractions, your potential responses are primarily limited to what you have built around yourself in the time leading up to the pressure point.
We naturally assume the issue of diverted production and impact is external distractions or conflicts. Thomas presses,
But here’s an overlooked truth: Our productivity suffers not just because we are distracted by outside interruptions, but also because our own brains, frazzled by today’s frantic workplaces, become a source of distraction in and of themselves.
If you are ever tempted to believe God is one of those people, beings, or entities that doesn’t really get you or understand what it’s like to be you, recalibrate your understanding of God.
If you read the full transcript of the second commandment, God goes on to talk about how ignoring this commandment makes Him jealous. He “jealously longs for the spirit He has caused to dwell in us” (James 4:5). The focus of your life is of greater passion to Him than to you. He believes in the value of you more than you do. He’s more aware of your focus than you are.
He contends, what you physically create around you (your office/home layout, technology, relationships, media, etc.) are the things that are defining your focus. You define what defines you by what you build around yourself. When those are the things that you most frequently turn to especially under pressure, they have become “idols,” “graven images.”
I was first drawn to Thomas’ article by the title, “To Control Your Life, Control What You Pay Attention To.” That is an insightful approximation of the challenge of don’t create idols.
These are the business principles regarding the creation of idols.
- You are defining what defines you.
- You pay attention to and are most affected by the things you can most easily hear, see, or touch.
- What you physically and mentally surround yourself with is your primary defining action.
- What you turn to when you are under pressure is a primary indicator of what you ultimately trust.
- Anxiety and frustration are indicators of a subpar point of trust.
- If you are internally dissatisfied with your present trust (God or idol), you will instinctively (potentially subconsciously) create a replacement for it.
- Settled personal control is possible but must be practiced.
- The practice of personal control is generated by what you surround yourself with.
1https://hbr.org/2018/03/to-control-your-life-control-what-you-pay-attention-to?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hbr&utm_source=twitter&tpcc=orgsocial_edit