Focus and Priorities

Life can feel like it is an endless cycle of distractions and tasks. There are so many things that compete for our attention. And because of this, our ability to sustain focus and attention can be reduced, making it difficult to fully engage with experiences and appreciate their meaning and significance.

According to a Harvard study in 2010, the average person’s mind wanders 47% of the time. This basically means our minds are half the time wandering while we’re working on something! When I think about how this compares to me, I think I’m not very different. I’m often distracted and by the time I’m done dealing with the distraction, I forget what I was doing or even why I was doing what I was doing. Worst still, sometimes the distraction completely takes over and the work I had started doing, doesn’t get done! 

This got me thinking about what I can do to stay focused. How do I stay focused on a task or a goal? And when it comes to coaching, how can I stay focused on the coachee and what they are talking about? Also, how can I help the coachee stay focused? How do we arrive at a point of convergence? I believe we need to first identify 2 things:

1. Priority – As the coach going into a coaching session, I need to prioritise the coachee. The coachee should be our focal point. For the coachee, we need to help them identify what’s priority for them at that point in time or in that season of their life. Several tools are available to help the coachee prioritise and focus, one such tool is the Wheel of Life.

2. Preoccupation – Coaches need to identify the thing that is causing distraction. The thing that is taking our attention away from the coaching conversation and the coachee. For the coachee, we need to help them identify what’s diverting their attention away from what’s the priority.


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