1. Accept that you can’t pay attention to everything you “should.”Because the information explosion is so recent, we still have beliefs left over from a time when there was much less competition for our attention. We believe we should be able to stay on top of everything. Your first step in effective attention management is to jettison this exaggerated sense of what you should be able to process. Get it through your head: There is too much information for you to handle! Good. Now that we’ve cleared that up, you can relax and deal with the reality of living in a world packed with attention demands.
2. Make prioritizing a priority.If you start a day without a clear plan about how you’re going to spend your attention, you’ll end up wasting most of it. Your first priority should be to take a little undisturbed time each day to evaluate the various demands on your attention before they show up. Do your prioritizing whenever you typically think most clearly (most people do best in the morning, but I like to take five minutes before I go to bed to preview the upcoming day). Rank tasks in order of importance and write them down. That way, when you’re being hounded for attention you’ll have a visual cue to help you focus on the most significant task first, leaving less necessary items for later—or for never. Cheers to more simplicity.