I don't hate all birds. Just the one that chirps relentlessly outside my window each morning at 6 AM. My dog, on the other hand, indiscriminately chases every bird, except the one I wish he would.

One morning, that bird cost me more than just sleep. It deprived me of the focus I needed to write a blog, an article, and a speech—tasks I had blocked out on my morning calendar. I was so tired that I simply couldn't get them done well.

As leaders, we don't need any help losing sleep. A survey in the Harvard Business Review found that 43 percent of us feel sleep-deprived at least four nights a week.¹ This makes not only the end of the day a total loss but even the middle of the day a serious battle, no matter how much we have to get done. Marathoners expect to hit the wall at mile 20. If they are hitting it at mile 8, they have a problem.

As we learned in Chapter 6, our ability to focus is a limited commodity. Like any commodity, our success is dictated by how well we allocate it. But how do we do that well? Let's look at some simple ways to maximize focus expenditures for ourselves and our people.

Cut Bad Expenses

How many choices did you make this morning before even stepping into work?

• Should I get up now or hit snooze? Snooze.
• Which shirt would look best? The one that's least wrinkled.
• Which coffee should I brew? Screw it; I'll stop at Starbucks.
• Eat a big breakfast or something on the run? Depends. Can I con my partner into cooking?
• Should I post on Facebook? Um, of course.

One of the best ways to cut our focus expenses is to automate mornings and reduce choices. This begins the night before.

I pick out my outfit for the next day and lay it out. After setting the alarm, I choose coffee and set the timer to brew it as I get up. My wife and I discuss breakfast (we try to eat together in the morning).

Then I do my first round of prioritization, calendar open, organizing diamonds and dollars and moving some items to dirt.

Now my morning won't be cluttered with decisions. Every choice we're compelled to make complicates our ability to choose right the next time.

But morning is just the first battleground. According to The Art of Choosing, we average about 70 choices a day. CEOs average 139 daily tasks.² The more we can automate and reduce these choices, the more we reserve our precious attention resources for the ones that matter.

Our choices are like RAM in an old computer. After the computer runs for a while, it slows down. The more programs you open, the more it chugs—until you need a reboot.

The fewer programs we access in our brains, the more RAM is available for the work we need to do.

This also holds true on an organizational level. Michael Mankins of Bain & Company says the typical company loses more than a quarter of its productivity to organizational drag—procedures that waste time and stymie accomplishment.³ The Harvard Business Review reports that it costs the economy more than $3 trillion a year in lost productivity.⁴

Often the easiest solution to a problem is to create a blanket policy and an extra layer of risk protection. We feel the pain from not having the policy but neglect the hidden cost of life with it. I worked at a company that protected themselves contractually from the rare worst-case-scenario and would walk away from clients who wouldn't agree to their terms. The loss in business and time assuredly added up to several times the risk they were hedging against.

The truth is organizations of any size can eliminate red tape. For instance, Netflix allows every employee to sign their own vendor contracts and lacks an expense policy, instead trusting employees to act in the company's best interests. The rationale: Letting employees use their best judgment will ultimately make them more productive.

But sometimes a lack of rules can sap our focus accounts by presenting even more choices. Should I expense a lunch where we spent, at best, two minutes discussing an account? Should I book a three-star or four-star hotel?

Netflix aside, scant boundaries can foster a culture where everyone feels compelled to work all the time. As leaders, sometimes we need to set limits that relieve them of that choice. And many other ones.

Take task scheduling. An employee's own method might actually work better. But now she must spend time and focus deciding which tasks to do instead of following a schedule that decides for her.⁵

Decentralizing any kind of decision making runs this risk. A department-store chain may let local managers decide on pricing, loss leaders, and social media, tapping into regional expertise. But having to make these choices keeps managers from focusing on other important tasks.

If you take away certain tasks and responsibilities, some of your folks might get their hackles up. No one likes the feeling of losing autonomy, even if it's best for them and the organization. One of the ways you can avoid resistance to healthy barriers and rules is to put it in the context of freeing their resources for more important decisions and tasks. Of course, that means you actually have to give them these.

The goal, on both an individual and organizational level, is to bank as much of our attention resources as possible.

Spend Them Wisely

Managing attention resources means shrewd spending, not more. Longer workweeks don't boost the bottom line. A Stanford study revealed that productivity drops sharply when people work more than 50 hours.⁶ Anything past 55 hours is practically pointless.

One of the best ways to spend our focus well is by planning our day from hardest to easiest, allowing for uninterrupted chunks of time.

Tony Schwartz, president and CEO of The Energy Project, echoes this advice. “Manage your energy, not your time,” he preaches, arguing that our minds can typically focus on a given task for only 90 to 120 minutes.⁷ After that, we need a 20- to 30-minute break to recharge. When we ignore these blocks and breaks, we might keep moving forward, but the quality of our work decreases significantly. If you are pushing past your focus time without recharging, you're losing productivity whether you know it or not.

And the most important recharge starts before your day does.

Now That I Have Your Attention…

For Section 6 reflection questions, summary video, and next step resources, please visit focuswise.com/book