Do You Suffer From Attention Deficit Disorder In Your Career?

If you are easily distracted, the one thing you need—focus—is not always easy to find.

I call it a helicopter brain and maybe you experience the same thing. I have gotten so busy lately, and there are so many thoughts in my head, that I have to schedule absolutely everything so I don’t forget! Between coaching, editing my new book, event speaking, interviews, consulting and being the mom of an aspiring and talented young woman, I once again find myself wondering if I can actually get it all done.

I know I’m not the only one who wonders that, as our lives seem almost manic at times. Like me, do you suffer from business-related ADD? It’s a term I invented to describe why entrepreneurs and busy managers are so easily distracted, because they rather not focus on just one thing! And therein lies a problem, because finding a focus, and setting priorities, is the key to getting everything done.

To stop the helicopter from taking off, first steps are to take some deep breaths, step back and then figure out the “how.” And that starts with focusing on what is most important. Sounds obvious, I know, and this isn’t exactly breaking news to you, yet it is easier said than done.

When determining where your focus should be, take a look at what’s going on in your life right now. What is truly and honestly the most important thing for you? In my case, it’s getting my new book, Happy Women. Happy World, ready for publication. An exciting time, of course, making last minute changes to a creative project that is my passion and life purpose—to help women become successful in their careers and personal lives.

One of the concepts in my book that women call transformational is the time-based tool called ego-RHYTHM. The idea of ego-RHYTHM is that it teaches you to figure out where on your life’s journey you are right now, and how that determines what your main focus should be right now. Women especially get so easily sucked into wanting to do everything all at once that we often find ourselves exceeding our limits. And then helicopter brain takes over.

This can be very frustrating as I know only too well from my own experience. It is easy to forget in the busy day-to-day that we need to plan and stick to self-care or set achievable priorities to avoid burn out. Let’s take a look at some simple tips you can implement right away.

First, what is your main focus? Is it work, health, your relationship, your children, family, money? If you are not sure please pay attention to what occupies your thoughts, especially the ones that keep you up at night. Once you’ve identified what your main focus is, make that your priority. That means that all decisions are based on the question: is this helping or hurting my main focus?

That means once you have your true priority clear, take a look at what that means for your daily routine. For me, that means sticking to my deadlines for the book, and not allowing a single day to pass without ensuring that all is moving forward as scheduled.

After you set your main focus, remember to look at this from a more simplified perspective. When you are clear about what matters most, you can plan your schedule and your tasks to reflect that. If nothing else, at the end of each day you know that you have furthered you goals even if it is one baby step at a time. Like in my case, writing the book. Even if you are as exhausted as I was yesterday after a three-week grueling work schedule, perhaps doing something simple like watching a video about story telling is all you can do. It is still a step forward even if it’s only a small one.

This attitude helps you feel a sense of accomplishment that we need in order to keep our confidence up so that our emotional body doesn’t get bogged down.

Our goal is to keep our confidence up and our lives moving forward. Sometimes we take big steps and sometimes it’s baby steps. And that is OK, too.