Have you ever found yourself feeling run down, stretched to your limit or overwhelmed to the point you aren’t sure where to begin each day?

You may be doing too much.

That’s hard for some high performers to face. In the realm of leadership, the phrase ‘What you focus on is what you get’ serves as a guiding principle that underscores the significance of directing attention and energy toward specific objectives. At the core of this principle lies the concept of a Focus Bucket – a finite reservoir of attention and mental resources that leaders can allocate to achieve desired outcomes. If you are trying to do too much, you may be actually performing as mediocre when you have potential to be a rock star. Understanding your own daily and weekly capacity is an important insight to high performance.

Imagine your focus as a bucket full of water. This bucket holds your mental energy, attention and cognitive resources. As a leader, you're faced with an array of tasks, challenges and goals vying for your attention. Every time you attend to a task you are pouring water out of your focus bucket. The more novel the task, the quicker you empty your bucket. Say a cupful at a time. The more routine the task-the slower your focus bucket empties. Say one teaspoon at a time.

Leadership effectiveness hinges on the ability to prioritize and manage this focus bucket strategically. It’s your job to discern which tasks align most with overarching goals and dedicate sufficient mental resources to these focal points.

It sounds simple, but I find that a crucial aspect often overlooked is the fact that the focus bucket is finite.

Often, high performers do too many things that are novel simultaneously and run the risk of emptying the focus bucket just when you need it most. This can lead to making preventable errors and leave you feeling scattered. That adds up to ineffective rather than inspiring leadership.

Research has illuminated the finite nature of human attention and the implications of excessive multitasking on productivity. A seminal study conducted by Stanford University Professor Clifford Nass revealed that chronic multitaskers displayed difficulty filtering out irrelevant information, organizing thoughts and switching between tasks efficiently.

Contrary to popular belief, these individuals performed worse while multitasking than those who focused on one task at a time.

Managing Your Focus Bucket as a Leader

Recognizing the limitations of the focus bucket is fundamental to effective leadership. Here's how you can harness the power of focus while avoiding the pitfalls of depletion:

• Stop unnecessary decision making. Make as many things as routine as possible to preserve focus for your strategic priorities. A friend of mine wears black every day and eats the same thing for lunch and breakfast each work day. They don’t drive to work. They take the train. They save their brain power for the tasks that matter. 
• Prioritize ruthlessly. Identify key objectives aligned with overarching goals and direct your focus predominantly towards these crucial areas in the early part of your workday.
 Learn to say, ‘No,’ to some tasks or meetings that aren’t aligned with your strategic priorities.

Now is an important time to be mindful of how many novel tasks you are considering as you draft your goals for the approaching new year. High Performance Leaders need to be wary of saying yes to everything and staying so busy multitasking that they are unable to actually achieve excellence.

Manage your focus bucket now and watch your performance soar!