Focus seems to be an incredibly rare commodity these days. It is something I have struggled with most of my life. Do you remember the scene in the movie Up! In the scene, Dug the Dog introduces himself to the main characters and halfway through he stops, mid sentence, looks sharply to his left and says “Squirrel!” then brings his focus back to the conversation at hand. 

That scene resonated strongly for so many that all you have to do is yell “Squirrel!” and people will immediately get the reference. It speaks to our collective tendency to succumb to distraction.

Time Confetti

In her 2014 book, “Overwhelmed: Work, Love, And Play When No One Has The Time” Brigitte Schulte coined the term “Time Confetti” to describe what she found to be the shredding of what should be plenty of time, into small, unenjoyable chunks. After a time-use researcher suggested to her that like every other American she had 30 hours a week of ‘leisure time’ she was skeptical. He challenged her to keep a journal of her leisure time which led her to discover vast amounts of what she describes as “Time Confetti”.

For me when I think of Time Confetti and the damage that it does in my life, I think of the amount of times that I switch tasks during my work day. Ultimately I often end up feeling like I spent all day being incredibly busy but surprisingly unproductive. What I realized years ago (yet still struggle to implement) was that when I am at my best I am working in short, focused blocks of time. 

Rarely did I truly lack the time to get things done, but often I lacked the focus to get things done. In order for any of us to be truly productive we require focused attention and effort. While we tend to applaud people’s ability to “multitask” what we really need to learn to do is to “monotask”. We need to learn to actually focus on one thing at a time. This is true whether we are talking about specific home or work projects or we are talking about personal relationships. 

How often have you been on the phone with someone sharing a story only to realize that they are not actually listening. Their focus is clearly elsewhere. Maybe they are in the middle of writing an email or simply thinking about the next task that they have to do. How does that make you feel? Right?! It’s annoying as fuck. Yet we all are guilty of it from time to time. 

My partner Michelle and I were discussing the concept of time confetti this morning and she laughed when I first mentioned it. She explained that she had just used the word confetti to describe strings of her work emails. When working in a team environment, how often do you receive separate emails on a single topic from multiple people? 

All potentially valuable information yet somehow incredibly fragmented. Everyone contributes their own relevant bits however, if there isn’t an easy way to tie them all together we end up with a giant box of unassembled puzzle pieces. All the pieces are there, yet all the individual team members are left to assemble them on their own. This has the potential to prevent any one person from actually seeing the whole picture. Or worse everyone seeing the picture differently. 

So how do we manage “Time Confetti” in our life? 

It Always Starts With Awareness

I’ve said it a thousand times and I will say it a thousand times more. It always starts with awareness. We can’t manage what we don’t see. With awareness comes choice. If you prefer a more philosophical lens the philosopher Gurdjieff says 

“You are in prison. If you wish to get out of prison, the first thing you must do is realize that you are in prison. If you think you are free, you can’t escape.”

George Gurdjieff

In other words if you don’t know you are in prison, escape is impossible. For many of us we are loath to admit it but we are addicted to the confetti. These small bursts of dopamine hits that give us temporary satisfaction as we jump from thing to thing to thing. Sometimes it is easier just to pretend that the problem does not exist and carry on complaining about our lack of time.

“What I really need Mike is more time in the day” 

I hear this so often yet when we get down to really examining where time is spent it is rarely true that we actually need more time in the day. For most of the clients I coach they simply need to be more efficient with the time that they have and focus on the priorities. That means reverse engineering the confetti and putting it back together into an entire sheet of paper. 

There are a few tactical ways you can do this. You could create a scorecard and tally all the times in a day you get drawn off task. If you are the kind of person that carries around a notebook, use one of the back pages and write down the date and simply add a tick mark beside or under that date every time you catch yourself getting pulled off task. 

November 26, 2021: IIIII IIIII IIIII IIIII 

Yep, it’s been a lot for me and it’s only 9:30am. This is why I need to use some of the techniques below to maximize my opportunities to stay on task and be the most productive version of myself possible. 

Track where you actually spend your time. I’ve written about this before but using a time tracking app such as Toggl or something similar can be very helpful. Simply start the timer when you begin working on a task or project and stop it the moment you stop working on that task or project. If you are anything like me you will likely find that in an 8 hour work day you can only account for half the time. I found that much of my time was not directly attributed to specific projects or tasks. 

That means that the rest of that time has been shredded into those tiny little flakes of confetti. This presents us with a huge opportunity to actually create more time in the day. That dream that so many of us have. 

Discipline

As I discussed above, it can be fun and gratifying to switch tasks a hundred times a day. That means that it really all starts with discipline. It will take discipline to sit down and track where you actually spend your time and how often you get pulled off task.

It will take discipline to not allow yourself to get sucked into that industrial size, micro cut, time shredder. I love visualizations so one of the things I do when I catch myself getting pulled off task is to picture a giant vortex sucking my time away from me and funneling into one of these giant shredders. The next time you find yourself saying “If only I had more time” try replacing that with “If only I had a little more discipline” and see how that feels. 

Time Blocking

For me this has been the most powerful shift in how I approach my day. It started when I wrote my book. The thought of writing an entire book over a long period of time was overwhelming. I came across a method that many are likely familiar with but I would suggest few actually employ with any consistency. 

The method is called the Pomodoro technique. Initially by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980’s. It uses a timer to break work into shorter intervals. Traditionally 25 minute blocks followed by a 5 minute break. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

I do almost all of my work in “Poms” now. It’s similar to how I run ultramarathons. If I think about having to run 100 miles all in one go the task seems overwhelming and largely impossible. However when I break that run down into running from one aid station to the next it becomes much more doable. I can always run the 8-10 miles required to get me to the next aid station. 

Email Management

Emails have become so ubiquitous that it is easy to allow them to shred our time into a million little pieces. When I started to recognize the number of times I was checking email, looking for something to respond to, it became very clear that this was a huge source of Time Confetti for me. 

With awareness comes choice. 

I created an autoresponder that replies to every email letting the sender know that I check emails at noon and then again at 4pm. I also give them my cellular number so that if they really need to get ahold of me urgently they can simply text me. Now I just have to be disciplined enough not to look at my emails until those time slots. 

The reality is that there is rarely an email that cannot wait at least four hours. Immediately my productivity went through the roof. I stopped responding to other people’s “demands” and could then focus on my priorities. I could do this in a much more efficient manner and I am certain that none of my clients felt that they were any less of a priority for me because of it. That was the lie that I had been telling myself. 

I told myself that in order to be exceptional I needed to be ‘responsive’. I told myself that would be one of my differentiators. The truth is that responding in four hours is still incredibly ‘responsive’ when you compare to the rest of the business world. It can still be a differentiator for me.

It just means that I have to be disciplined about sitting down and providing thoughtful responses at the right time. For things that will require larger amounts of time to respond to I will schedule a “Pom” or two or three in my calendar. I will reply to the email immediately at noon or four and set expectations on the timing for a thorough response.

Conclusion

By now you should know that I am a big fan of ‘sound bites’. Little digestible descriptors that I can easily hang onto and reference throughout my day. It is a large part of what I practice sharing with you. When I heard the term “Time Confetti” I knew that it would stick for me. 

I’ve shared with you some of the tools that I use to minimize the Time Confetti as much as possible. My challenge for you today is to start with some of the awareness practices. Start to document your confetti. See if you can identify how much “Time Confetti” is impacting your life and your productivity. 

I’d also love to hear some of the strategies that you use in order to manage the amount of time shredding that happens in your life. Drop a note in the comments below.

In my work I talk a lot about leading with empathy and compassion. I talk about the value of kindness, acceptance and love in leadership. These words can be mistaken for “soft” or “weak” and therefore some are hesitant to employ those qualities in a leadership role. This is only the case if we do not learn how to set boundaries.

There is a truth that took me a little longer to learn than perhaps it should have. 

Empathy and compassion without boundaries and accountability are a recipe for disaster. 

They are not mutually exclusive. Far too often I see good, talented, even gifted individuals not live up to their potential because they lack the ability to set boundaries. They confuse being a good, kind person with having no boundaries. 

The truth of the matter is that you can be both someone who is kind, caring, and compassionate as well as have firm boundaries as to what is acceptable in your life. The cold, hard truth of the matter is that if you have one without the other you are ripe to be taken advantage of. Abused even. 

This holds true for all of our relationships. Personal as well as professional. Setting boundaries is a skill that takes practice, repetition and effort to master. Once you start to learn the art of articulating what is acceptable to you, and that which is not, life/business becomes so much better. There is a profound freedom in learning to assert your boundaries. 

What are boundaries

Boundaries are a set of guidelines. A list of what is acceptable in your life and what is not. Boundaries aren’t beholden to right or wrong, they are simply about identifying what you will allow in your life. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is reasonable to consistently challenge your boundaries and ensure that they continue to match the values which you strive to live by. 

Walls vs. Boundaries

This is an important distinction. There are many times when we seek to improve ourselves we can implement practices that are counterproductive. In the context of boundaries it is very easy to mistake putting up walls for setting boundaries. 

Walls keep people out. They are protectionist in nature and usually stem from fear. They create disconnection and can lead to loneliness and isolation. As human beings we are hardwired for connection. When we create disconnection by putting up walls we risk that disconnection becoming a much larger mental and emotional well being issue. We may put up walls in order to protect but ultimately those walls can become our downfall. 

We don’t have to do life alone. We don’t have to keep people out. We don’t have to be the lone wolf (yes men I am looking at us). We need to have the courage to value ourselves enough to make sure that we are clear and firm in our boundaries. 

Boundaries simply let people in relationship with us know the rules of engagement. When we are able to clearly articulate what those are, then the people in our lives can choose to abide by them or not. If they choose not to respect our boundaries then at some point we need to make the decision to limit the amount of opportunity that we allow them to break those boundaries. Why don’t we set boundaries?

Why Don’t We Set Boundaries?

• A fear of losing love and belonging
• It takes effort (especially if you haven’t before)
• We lack self worth
• We don’t want to appear selfish

How to set Boundaries

Identify what your boundaries are

As with everything in life, with awareness comes choice. If we do not know what is acceptable in our life then we really will not be able to articulate what is not acceptable. Often times we know when something just doesn’t feel right. However, it is easy to gloss over these feelings and ignore those items that really are not acceptable in our life. Over time these things will add up and ultimately start to do damage. 

Listen to your gut. If you are a list kind of person, create a list of things that are not acceptable that you are currently allowing in your life.

Are there patterns starting to emerge? 

I suspect there will be patterns that you can begin to recognize. In the beginning you may want to simply focus on finding the patterns without trying to change them. It can be overwhelming trying to do it all at once. Simply start to notice the patterns. Let them become clear first, then you can start to do the work to change.

It will be difficult

If you’ve had a hard time expressing and asserting your boundaries for most of your life then you need to understand a few things. The first is that it is not going to be easy to change old patterns of behaviour and you will need to give yourself some grace as you start to make the shift. 

One of my favorite expressions is “When I am at my best…” 

When I am at my best I am living my values and standing firm in my boundaries.

For me this subtle shift in language is powerful. First it is a reminder that these are the things I do when I am living my best life. Secondly it allows me to acknowledge that I do not always get it right. There is no way I am “at my best” 100% of the time. I don’t expect that to be the case and allows me the latitude to have a little bit of self compassion when I am not operating “at my best”. 

Those that have been in your life the longest will push back the hardest. If you have not been good in the past of setting boundaries then people have come to expect a certain way of being from you. So when you start to alter that and start asserting those boundaries, the ones you love the most will likely be the ones to make it the most difficult to do. It is uncomfortable for them, they may not be able to see the harm that the lack of boundaries has caused you in the past. Or worse, they may not care because it was more convenient for them when you were not setting those clear and concise rules of engagement. 

Consistency is key

As I mentioned earlier there will be times when you fail. There will be times when you drop the ball and let people cross those boundaries. That is perfectly OK, just gently re-establish them and be consistent. 

Do not engage in the drama. When you start setting boundaries you will get challenged. You will get questioned and you will likely feel like you need to justify your position. 

You don’t. You simply need to decide what is acceptable in your life and what is not. It honestly doesn’t matter if you are right or wrong, all that matters is what you are willing to tolerate in your life.

Make the decision

Do you ever feel ‘stuck’ in your relationships? Do you vacillate on what is right and what is wrong? 

So often we live in nowhere land. We accept behaviours that are unacceptable. We let resentment build and harbor ill feelings. We live in this low simmer of discomfort and angst because we are living in indecision. We haven’t decided that we will accept the unacceptable nor have we decided that we won’t. 

When we live in this purgatory. It is an awful way to live. I’m not here to tell you the right or wrong decision, I am here to tell you to simply decide. Either way. Right or wrong doesn’t really matter what does is that you make the decision. 

Decide that you are willing to live with the behavior or decide that you are not willing to live with the behaviour. You cannot start to make change until you have made the decision.  

The Weapon of Guilt

Oh, I know! Right? For many of you this subtitle landed hard! I see it so often. I see it from family, I see it from religion, I see it from cultural norms. Guilt used as a weapon to breech your boundaries. To manipulate you into tolerating the intolerable. 

I was recently having this conversation with a client who has someone in their life that weaponizes guilt against them in order to push boundaries. They lamented the fact that it was so hard because they felt so guilty for asserting themselves. They allowed themselves to feel like they were a bad person if they stood firm in their boundaries. Sound at all familiar?

I’m fairly certain we have all experienced this at some point in our lives. 

• “You must not really love me”
• “A good {insert religion} wouldn’t do that”
• “If this was valuable to you then you would…”
• “A good daughter/son/wife/husband would do this…”

After listening to all of the reasons why they felt so guilty and acknowledging how hard it was going to be I asked them a question. 

Would you rather live with temporary guilt or permanent exhaustion? 

You see the things they were being manipulated into doing were literally killing them. They were putting their life on hold for a family member that was using guilt as a weapon to manipulate. It feels incredibly difficult at the moment but the reality is that the whole thing is quite simple. Simple but not easy. 

You have a choice. 

You can choose to try and appease those around you (many of whom will never be appeased regardless of what you do) or you can choose to stand firm in your values, beliefs and boundaries. While this is temporarily difficult I can assure you that it will give you a lifetime of relief. 

Reason or Excuse

I’ve talked about this exercise in a variety of contexts. There are moments when we need to ask ourselves this simple question.

“Is this a legitimate reason to allow this behavior in my life or is this really just an excuse to make me feel better about allowing it to happen?”

When it comes to setting boundaries it is easy to mistake excuses for reasons. 

• “It’s a cultural thing”
• “It’s a religious thing”
• “It’s just how they were raised.”
• “They don’t know any better.”
• “They aren’t ill intentioned.”

All of these things may be true. Truth doesn’t turn an excuse into a reason. These things being true doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice yourself and your values because of them. 

It can be true that it is a cultural thing and it can also be true that you won’t allow it in your life.
It can be true that it is a religious thing and it can also be true that you won’t allow it in your life.
It can be true that it is how they were raised and it can also be true that you won’t allow it in your life.
It can be true that they don’t know any better and it can also be true that you won’t allow it in your life.
It can be true that the person encroaching on your boundary isn’t ill intentioned and it can also be true that their behaviour is unacceptable to you. 

Like anything in life worth having, setting your boundaries will take practice and discipline. It will take discipline to consistently stick to your boundaries and not acquiesce to pressure. No different than any diet or exercise program, you will need to be disciplined in your execution. If you miss a time or two don’t let that dissuade you. 

Imagine what your life will look like once you become a master of setting boundaries. Use that as your intrinsic motivation to stick to it. 

Once you master the art of setting boundaries you will find that there are so many areas of life where you can apply this skill. With your kids, with your partner, with your work, with your employees, with your teams, with your boss, and your family. When executed with care and attention solid boundaries will only help solidify and deepen your relationships, not compromise them. 

I’d love to know how you make out. Drop me a note in the comments and let me know.