Wow, last Tuesday was quite a day, and the biggest problem I had in managing what was going on was managing myself and my attention span.

The final straw came in a meeting where three things happened that threw me off-course.

The woman who had scheduled the meeting arrived late, and she was wearing flip-flops.

Another participant rarely took his eyes off his Smartphone and kept typing away on it, then asked for information to be repeated four (!) times because he missed what was said.

Another attendee proved gifted at steering every topic or comment back to several items on her personal agenda

Lateness. Flip-flops in an office. Inattention. An all-about-me attitude. Grr.

What a perfect storm of personal hot buttons being pummeled in rapid succession. I couldn’t stop looking at the flip-flops being noisily flopped and waggled in the air. The personal-agenda-stuff and present-in-body-but-not-in-mind were so distracting I couldn’t concentrate.

I was letting these folks pull me off my game.

I. Had. To. Focus.

It was time for some serious tough love self-coaching Jane to Jane:

Note to self:  these are my pet peeves, all mine. Let go. 

The meeting hadn’t been called to meet my preferences. “How often people’s’ minds wander is definitely a big predictor of who’s happy and who’s not happy,” writes Matthew Killingsworth, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Harvard University who studied attention spans.  I wasn’t happy my hot buttons were being pushed, but I was the one with the problem. I had to let it go. Be here now.

Acknowledge the distractions, just don’t let yourself react to them.

“The ability to willfully focus your attention is physically separate in the brain from distracting things grabbing your attention,” says Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  OK, I can do this. Focus on the meeting’s purpose and why you’re here.

You are in charge, kiddo, of where your attention goes.

You can fuss and fume mentally over the flip-flops or the phone or the “I-love-me” megaphone. OR you can focus on the project deliverables and your role in making them happen. Remember what you are here to do and do it.

Remember why you’re there.

The meeting was called to get work done, not for you to watch and judge the other participants. Remember the terrific outcome this work will achieve. See the big picture of the work, not your hot buttons being pushed. “What your brain is best equipped to do is to think, to analyze, to dissect and create. And if you’re simply responding to bits of stimulation, you won’t ever go deep,” says Dr. Edward Hallowell, a psychiatrist focused on attention deficit disorder. Got it. Now ready to do it. Now doing it. Keep doing it. Yeah, Jane!

Whew…finally back on track. 

What works for you to get refocused when your mind wanders?

Image source before quote:  morgueFile.com