THE ABILITY TO FOCUS IS THE MOST COMMON BRAIN CHALLENGE IN WORKING LIFE. ONCE YOU MASTER THIS, YOU’LL ACHIEVE WHAT’S IMPORTANT.

End-user: Helmi Hämäläinen, Trainer: Ville Ojanen

I step to the edge of a shaking springboard. I have been practicing diving for a month to learn a new skill. Committing to something has always been challenging for me as I am not a natural planner. Despite everything, I have been at the pool every week and committed time to learn how to dive. I slept exceptionally well last night and have focused my energy on this goal.

Imagine that you have achieved an important goal. You did a successful somersault or finally saw results after working hard for months at your job. What led you to achieving this personally important goal?

Fragmented working life and continuous change is a great challenge to the brain when we should be focusing on achieving an objective.

‘The ability to focus is the most common brain challenge in working life. It is the most common complaint,’ knows the ABC training psychologist Ville Ojanen.

When I focus, I direct my energy towards important things, so they progress and get done. A healthy brain aims for achievement.

This training breaks concentration down to bare bones. While going through this training, I learned to identify the daily factors impacting my ability to focus. Whether we are talking about diving practice or writing a work e-mail, developing focus starts with setting objectives. Focusing requires a flexible definition of objectives. I want to learn how to dive, but in a rush, I must know how to re-evaluate this objective. Maybe I need to take a different path. At the same time, you must practice systematically. Easier said than done, but good objectives give us energy to move forward.

A good objective clarifies necessary actions. Additionally, it steers us to getting things done and supports us moving on. The objectives of the information age are constantly changing. A good objective is clear, measurable, and achievable but also flexible. According to psychologist Ville Ojanen, unclear goals are even more common than setting objectives that are too big. ‘Significant and important objectives always require collaboration.’ According to Ojanen, achieving an objective requires visible actions and evaluations, which mean discussions and sparring.

Invest time like money

A clear objective is not enough on its own – achieving it also requires resources. Physical recovery – sleep, exercise, and nutrition – is the foundation of concentration. Psycho-social recovery processes like the feeling of achievement and interpersonal relations are also meaningful when we need to keep going. If I have enough energy, I can plan the use of my time. Time can be viewed as an investment. Investing time is different from just using it.

Because we learn new skills by doing, we should plan our actions. Ojanen gave us a tip to plan the next day during the previous evening, and I tried this. It gave my brain free time to prepare for the upcoming tasks: preparation is stress-free, and you can jump right in the next morning. I have also enhanced my time use with to-do lists. It’s ok to postpone some things to the next day.

‘Show some self-compassion. Any planning is more likely to help you than no planning at all,’ says Ojanen.

Procrastinating is a separate matter. Sometimes it’s better to leave an idea to marinate and handle it when ready. However, procrastination is often just an excuse. Smashing chest first into water is just not nice. Pointless procrastination depletes your energy and stresses you until you get the mandatory task done. It’s important to differentiate between procrastination and flexibility. Procrastination costs you energy and leads nowhere, whereas long-term flexibility is a precondition for focusing.

According to Ojanen, efficient time use can be practiced as a cure. ‘I allow myself to drift into chaos before starting to use time management methods. If I repeat this often enough, the skills will become commonplace.’

Identify personality and challenges

People have different habits and methods for time management. However, in the information age, we are all in a similar situation where we are constantly interrupted. Luckily we can also learn to manage interruptions. If I identify an interruption, I can accept the situation and take a time-out. Instead of answering a new e-mail immediately, I can think about the situation I am in. It makes continuing after the interruption easy.

The extent of disturbance caused by interruption links to my personality; it is one of the elements impacting my ability to focus. It’s often thought that some personality traits are either good or bad. While this is not true, personality does affect the challenges I meet when trying to focus.

One of the personality traits affecting my ability to focus is my habit of seeking out interaction. Extroverts may find it hard to concentrate if colleagues are heading out for a coffee. I want to join them! Introverts would stay focused and finish the task but might miss out on some important coffee table discussions. According to Ville Ojanen, people don’t know their personality very well.

‘When a personality trait is highlighted, they recognize themselves easily and can develop their behavior.’

By nature, I’m not skilled at pushing myself, but luckily focusing is also based on motivation.  My brain has trouble focusing on tasks that don’t interest me. I usually get excited about tasks that serve my central values and objectives. I want to learn to dive, as it’s a new skill that would develop my physical ability. I’d stay healthy and live longer.

But what happens if the objective seems boring, like answering e-mails. If I don’t have the inner motivation, can I motivate myself with a reward?

‘Rewards often help us finish simple tasks that we really don’t want to get to. The more complex the task, the worse the rewards work.’ According to Ojanen, in that case, we would be fixated on the carrot, and our abilities deteriorate.

Things progress efficiently if a community understands the importance of personality.

 Trainee, author: Helmi Hämäläinen, Trainer: Ville Ojanen

I have often found a colleague of mine exasperatingly rude and against change. When I get an idea, I am already halfway into implementing it, whereas my colleague is still considering its viability. Each one of us can recognize a similar situation at work where we need to work with very different people.

Personality refers to the natural traits of people when reacting to various situations. According to the Understanding personality types at work coach and psychologist Ville Ojanen, understanding personality is an underutilized resource at work communities.

‘Differences can be annoying and exhausting. It is why we often drift towards working with similar personalities. It’s a pity, as diversity also provides an opportunity to increase productivity,’ claims Ojanen.

The more diverse personalities a community has the more strengths, perspectives, and methods for problem-solving they have.

Let’s make personality visible

Big5 is the best known and most researched personality theory. According to it, personality is based on five factors, which are surrounded by the boundaries of different traits. Today’s fast-paced and result-oriented working life favors certain characteristics, but actually, there are no good or bad personalities. Furthermore, people act differently in different environments.

Evolution has made efficient work possible by creating different personality traits. However, interaction often creates situations where different characteristics result in opposing perspectives and make work more complicated. According to psychologist Ville Ojanen, discussion is the only way to disarm the unpleasant experiences caused by different actions based on different personalities.

‘In a worst-case scenario, a work community may suffer from piled up bad feelings where nobody actually knows how they got into that mess.’

When we make personalities visible, it is easy to understand that the other person is guided by their personality and temperament, not their desire to be mean.

“In a worst case scenario we end up in a chaotic situation where one party is fussing around and the other has a hard time reacting to change.”

 Five perspectives on personality 

The first and third Big5 theory personality traits are neuroticism and openness to experience. The opposing sides of the first one are calm and reactive people.

‘Neuroticism is like a psycho-physical sensor that receives stimuli and reacts to them with different sensitivity,’ explains Ojanen.

Where my colleague is cool as a cucumber, effortlessly in control of the most challenging situations, I react strongly and sensitively to any stimuli. Openness to experience speaks of my need for change. The opposite would be my colleague, who likes to keep things as they are. Moderates are somewhere in the middle, contemplating different options.

Recognizing both traits may be useful in situations where various personalities work together. At the best of times, my colleague’s stable and maintained personality balances my sensitive nature, and we manage the situation well. In a worst-case scenario, we end up in a chaotic situation where one party is fussing around, and the other has a hard time reacting to change.

Respecting diversity is the basis for collaboration 

Between neuroticism and openness, we find the most commonly known personality trait. Extraversion means the tendency to seek out interaction and to tolerate the related stimuli well. An extrovert gains energy from interaction, whereas an introvert finds interactions tiring. The middle ground would be an ambivert, who does not clearly fit to either.

The remaining two Big5 personality traits are agreeableness and conscientiousness. Agreeableness means the tendency to adapt to others’ opinions and needs. Where an agreeable colleague would accept a new working method and be a good team player, another might be a challenger with strong opinions and question the change. Somewhere in the middle is me, a negotiator, who is more agreeable than a challenger but doesn’t give up without a fight.

The last personality trait is conscientiousness, which tells us about how we aim for our objectives. If my team’s personalities are not highlighted, I might experience my conscientious colleague as annoyingly organized. At the same time, I might seem equally annoying with my flexible schedules. Good self-awareness and understanding of personality help me evaluate the situation and determine which tasks would benefit most from my natural strengths. Furthermore, it becomes easier to relate to others as I understand the background for their different approaches.