But my favourite part of focus management is not the ‘where’ but the ‘when’. More often than not, our productivity suffers when we’re faced with tasks we really don’t want to do, but need to do. For years, I was convinced that we should tackle them right after the most interesting projects, when we were energised and motivated.
But then my colleague and I conducted a study in a Korean grocery shop. And we found out that when employees were given very interesting tasks, they performed much worse in boring and routine tasks. Perhaps this is because of the residual attention effect. Our minds keep coming back to the interesting task, and it distracts us from the uninteresting one.
However, in an experiment in which we showed Americans interesting videos and then gave them a data entry task, we found a different mechanism – the contrast effect. After funny videos, a routine task like data entry seems even more unbearable. It’s like eating vegetables after dessert. So, to keep your attention during boring tasks, it’s better to do them after slightly more interesting ones. And leave the most interesting ones for the end as a reward. And it’s not about timing – it’s about choosing the right moment.
How to use focus management for creativity
I think your main goal isn’t just to be more productive. You probably want to be more creative as well.
Productivity and creativity require different focus management strategies. Productivity is fuelled by special attention “filters” that allow us to consciously ward off distracting thoughts. Creativity, on the other hand, requires getting rid of these filters.
How do you get the best out of each strategy? In Timehacking, Daniel Pink writes about how circadian rhythms help us choose when we are most productive. Larks are better off doing analytical work as early as possible while they are at their peak of attentiveness. Routine tasks should be left to the middle of the day, and creative tasks should be left to the evening hours, when larks tend to think more non-linearly. Owls have a different schedule: they should do creative work in the morning, and analytical work should be saved for the evening.
This is not time management, because we can spend the same amount of time on tasks even after we rearrange our schedules. It’s focus management, because we note the order in which we find it easier to complete tasks and distribute them accordingly.
