If you are an Entrepreneur or a person managing a family’s multiple needs and interests, a challenge that adds pressure on you is context switching.
When you are switching from Chores to Technical to Content Creation to Marketing to Life tasks, the skills and mindset required for each task are different.
Our programming from the industrial era is to be a specialist in a field. This mindset is a cultural programming that is tough to get out of. That is why you see a lot of work-life balance complaints in popular culture.
I would argue that there is a lack of tools and frameworks for One Task Focus.
Work tasks are essentially tasks for which you are paid.
Life tasks are pleasure-seeking activities, chores, and responsibilities towards your family, yourself, and society.
How you integrate work and life tasks determines your life satisfaction.
One essential part of OTF is limiting notification. This strategy doesn’t work for anyone who is required to be in meetings or on calls all day long. This framework works for Entrepreneurs with autonomy to choose who they work with, specialists who are hired to lead a function, and anyone managing a family.
This might seem counterintuitive to the calendar-based life we all live to manage stakeholders, clients, and families.
It is the awareness of the ‘clock,’ the ‘notification’ that takes our attention away from the task.
As human beings, we don’t look at the pending task as just another task. There are cultural, values, and guilt (lack of adhering to values) narratives around it.
If I don’t return the email/message/call, how will the other person perceive me?
If I don’t do the task exactly at 4:00 pm instead of 4:30 pm – how will I meet all the targets?
What happens if I don’t meet the targets?
The Calendar is not just a list of pending appointments and tasks. It is a checklist of narratives that takes the focus away from the present moment.
Once you stop the mind’s narrative on pending tasks and focus on the present, you have taken the first step in One Task Focus.
For this to work, you must disable notifications.
Notifications are guilt narratives on what you should be doing in the future instead of what you should be doing now.
Be present. Focus on the task. You won’t miss the meeting or the next task.