In my previous post about Focus Management, I shared that Focus Management is the key lever and differentiator that separates the two states we experience – “thriving in a variety of tasks we perform” vs. “fatigue from context switching”. After writing the post, I continued to expand on this thinking to see how it could be interlaced with the number of areas/spheres that we have in our jobs. I am a fan of 2×2 frameworks and I explored this intersection between Focus Management and No. of areas our job/work using a 2×2 framework. Here is what I could carve out of the intersections.
Focus Management Framework
The four quadrants reveal 4 different experiences that we will likely face, depending on our ability to manage our focus and the number of areas our work entails.
- If you are someone with a low ability to manage focus (not to be confused with low ability to focus itself) and if you have fewer areas to manage at work, then the chances are that you can manage your work well. However, it might not hold much promise about the future (growth).
- On the other hand, if you have fewer areas to manage at work and if you are someone with strong focus management skills (with good energy management, well-compartmentalized life priorities etc.), it will certainly give you more room to grow your domain expertise in a way that you could become a subject-matter-expert (SME).
- If you are someone with multiple areas to manage at work, and if you haven’t got your focus management strategies right and sorted, then there is a strong likelihood that you could experience fatigue from context switching.
- And lastly, if you are quite good with your focus management strategies and if you also manage multiple areas, as part of your work, then you are very likely to thrive well in that variety. And that could also fetch you growth. However, you might still need to be watchful of burnout. Because, no matter how efficient, productive, and skilful you are at managing your focus, energies, life priorities etc., things can get overwhelming at times when you juggle too many balls in a day. There still needs to be a conscious effort to optimize your work areas as much as possible.
What do you think about the outcomes represented in these four quadrants? Do you think there is anything I am missing? Do you have any ideas to improve this framework? What do you want to take away from this? Please let me know in the comments.