Set up for Distraction
Keeping focused and engaged on the job at hand
Jack Nicklaus, the most successful professional golfer of all time once said, “golf is a game of misses.” He refers to the fact that it is impossible to hit a golf ball exactly where you want it to go, and that the key is to play a shot so that your miss is a good one. After going to see the next best player of all time, Tiger Woods, up close in person, I feel that golf is not only a game of misses but also a game of distraction.
Tiger on the putting green at Royal Melbourne GC
I went to the Presidents Cup held in Melbourne recently. This is a team event which means that it is less formal than normal professional golf tournaments and there is a lot more cheering and partisanship. It makes for a great atmosphere and a lot of fun, which the players get involved in too.
Timothy Gallaway (author of The Inner Game of Golf) writes that the golf swing is the most technical of all sporting actions with hundreds of bio-mechanical actions synchronising at precise moments to execute a shot where millimeters make all the difference. When striking the ball an intense focus is required. Yet at the Presidents Cup, there are constant cheers coming from all over the course, constant crowd movement, constant changes in game situation, and layer upon layer of distraction. That’s all before you start thinking about the wind, how your ball is sitting on the ground and so on. The distractions are wide, varied, and non-stop.
I was walking the course with a friend of mine that works in an open office and we discussed how our working lives are not that different. The ability to engage in our work-at-hand is difficult. And, as our information overload continues to increase there are more and more ways to be distracted.
Cal Newport, author of Deep Work says, “efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction.” If we do not discuss and work on ways to reduce our tendencies towards distraction, then it is unlikely we will be able to spend more time engaged in our tasks and get into a state of flow.
At the golf, I could see why Tiger Woods is so good. He is a picture of calm, focus, and complete concentration. A friend of mine remarked that he displays the traits of mastery. I like that. A master of focus. A master of keeping distraction at bay. What a great aspiration for all of us in our own workplaces. In our own careers.
