Focus, almost by definition, is about deciding what to ignore.

The less opportunity there is for your attention to be distracted, the more likely you are to succeed at your Deep Work – the work you joined up to do with us.

At Cognician, there are at least three sources of novelty to keep track of:

• Asana
• Slack
• Email

You'll spend some part of your time every day reading the words of others in these places. It's up to you to find the sweet spot of how much or how little of this you read – subscribe to – on a regular basis.

Too little, and you could find yourself uninformed about topics that matter to you. Too much, and you could end up overwhelmed and anxious, because you're tracking the context of too many things at once.

You need to look at all the Asana projects you're a part of, and the Slack channels you hang out in, and make a decision on whether to reside, merely visit from time to time, or even ignore that project or channel entirely.

Key ideas

These are some personal notes I’ve kept when introducing Asana to new joiners at Cognician; it’s really a Trojan horse for teaching folks how to manage their attention, their subscriptions and their commitments, in a way that makes the system they are in healthier for them and for everyone around them.

• Be deliberate about how you spend your attention.
  • Too little = missing important work, FOMO.
  • Too much = distraction, anxiety, overwhelm.
• Therefore, be deliberate about what you're subscribed to, and when you consume it.
• Therefore, disable push notifications. All of them.
  • ... with one happy exception: anything that a loved one would use to reach you. Therefore, don’t use those channels for anything work related, so they stay ‘pure’.
  • Instead, have a practice of regularly reviewing your subscriptions (e.g. once or twice a day, or every 90 minutes, or...) so that you remain suitably responsive.
  • You could set yourself reminders, which at least limits the 'push' to times of the day you decide in advance.
  • By exception, you could enable it for a specific channel for specific, short-term, fast-feedback loops you're currently focused on. Disable when done.
  • If you have to be ‘on call’ for something, work with your team to direct all the ad-hoc demand into an inbox that you routinely check, rather than having it come in via every communication channel you have.
  • Don’t receive email notifications for tools that have their own innate inbox. Rather consume it at the source, and have your email inbox be far less busy.
• Therefore, it's both healthy and necessary to let go of stuff. Work is continuously added; to remain sane, work must also be removed (through doing or through irrelevance).
• Keep your WIP low.
  • The quality of what you're working on will increase.
  • Your feedback loops can be faster, if your team is also keeping WIP low (less waiting for responses).
• Keep your queues short.
  • This reduces what you have 'loaded in memory', for clearer thinking.
  • Makes it possible for your plans to change with minimal effort (less to negotiate + reassign).
• Keep your inboxes empty. Be deliberate about filing everything in a place that matches your intentions for paying attention to them.