What are you doing right now? I imagine it could be any multitude of things, countless tasks, numerous distractions, good or bad, fighting for our attention. What was that loud noise in the kitchen? Where are my keys? Did I close my laptop in the office? Do the kids have clean socks for tomorrow? Did I pay the electric bill?
Distractions may come in the form of the urgent and even good but their subtle ability to pull us away from our main priorities prove they can also, steal our focus. There is apparently a lot of good neuroscience which supports this premise.
I’m not a scientist. I was just reading a leadership article quoting some scientific research. The study suggested one of the reasons some (leaders) people (moms & dads) are able to succeed in fulfilling their vision (having clean socks in the drawer) is our ability to focus our attention on a few, important priorities throughout the day. Now, back to the leadership article.
Dr. Henry Cloud lives in Los Angeles, California. He is an author, speaker, and leadership coach to CEO’s and business executives. He is also a clinical psychologist with an extensive background. He says, “Every leader is aiming to take people from point A to point Z, but not every leader succeeds in doing so. As a leader, you are steward of your own attention, and responsible for creating space for your team to fully focus on matters relating to to the team’s mission.” Could it be that simple? What if we are trying to do too much, at once?
Dr. Cloud went on to say: “We multi-switch projects but we do not multi-task. Our brain cannot attend to more than one thing at a time. The concept of multi-tasking is 100% (joke) impossible to do. We multi-switch.” I had never heard this explained in scientific terms. He went on to explain this is why it is a mistake to text and drive at the same time. Safe driving requires focused attention. That seems reasonable.
I see a lot of application for everyone with good intentions to accomplish more. What if the science is spot on? People, in general are doing too many things at once. Many of us claim to be good at multi-tasking. Neuroscience suggests our frontal lobe vortex brain needs focused attention to drive safely home after work.
I see application for this in our relationships once we arrive home. Who hasn’t caught them-selves “listening” to their spouse or children but not really “present” in the moment? We may be distracted by the game on TV we’re watching. Maybe glancing at text messages as we nod our heads in reply to a question.
What if in our desire to do everything, and do it well, turns out, we are doing nothing well? For our brain to be fully present we need to practice focused attention. If you are easily distracted, listen up = success in life will require wisdom from God in our busy world today.
Join us this weekend at Journey Church. We wrap up our first series of 2024. We have focused our attention for six weeks on ONE WORD… wisdom. We need God’s wisdom in 2024 to succeed whatever our dreams, goals, and ambitions.
God’s Wisdom is needed for more balance, healthy commitments, and being aligned with God’s purpose in 2024.
Who knew? Neuroscience and the Bible can agree: We will need FOCUSED ATTENTION to accomplish our best goals this year and every year.
