Psychological Super Powers: 3 Steps to Focus Like an Expert

Are you struggling to write that academic manuscript, get it published, finish your dissertation, and you just feel like you need to focus? You're not alone and today we're going to talk about three tips to help you focus like an expert.

My name is Caitlin Faas and I'm a psychology professor and coach, whose expertise has been built in child and adolescent development and earning that Ph.D. But now I'm building expertise in becoming a really great coach and helping busy professionals be their best selves on their academic path. I'll give you examples from both, as we talk about these three steps.

1. Practice, practice, practice

The first step to focusing like an expert, you're not going to want to hear this, but it's all about putting in the hours. Cal Newport talks about this, with Deep Work, and Malcolm Gladwell talks about this with 10,000 hours, but the idea is to really focus and practice deliberately so that you can gain expertise.

My example is that when I was learning statistics, I spent hours in front of my computer, searching discussion forums, I would ask other people that I knew who were experts, I checked out it seemed like every book from the library about statistics and structural equation modeling (SEM). And so I spent the hours and it wasn't glamorous, it was really tedious, but now it has a big payoff when people ask me, "How do you know about statistics?" or, "How are you able to just think of that phrase or think of that answer?"" I can say, "I put in the hours."

2. Reject distractions

The second step to focusing like an expert is to say no to distractions in an active and passionate way. One of the keys to this is to make sure that you have a clear vision for the future and the thing you want to accomplish. Completing your Ph.D. or writing that manuscript, you have this vision that you want to accomplish it and it feels clear. Then everything else that doesn't relate to that needs to be something that you say no to. It could be tempting to write that grant proposal or write a different paper that isn't keeping you focused on your current paper that you want to publish.

For me, actually taking the statistics example that I used before, if I kept learning statistics and just continued to go to classes and workshops, that would actually be a distraction from what I'm trying to do now, which is share the knowledge that I have about statistics with people like you.

Because my goal is teaching, sharing knowledge, and being a speaker, that's where I need to keep my focus. It seems like a really easy distraction to just keep learning. And so sometimes you can say, "Oh, yeah. Netflix is a distraction for me." Well, right, that is something that you could say no to maybe more easily, like you know you should say no to Netflix.

But look for the distractions like learning more information, that's actually something you also need to say no to right now so that you can be an expert for the vision that you have.

3. Delegate your weaknesses

The third step we want to recommend for focusing like an expert is to actually delegate your weaknesses. You don't have to be an expert in everything, you want to be an expert in a few things and to focus on that.

Something that I delegate is my website design and the graphics that are created for my website. It's not something I'm interested in learning how to do and the people I have that work on my team are excellent at it. I'm happy to support them in their business endeavors. That's something that I delegate, but it's something that I get a lot of compliments about and I always make sure I say, "Oh, that's not something that I did myself. I hired people to do that." By doing something like delegating a weakness, I'm still able to build something that's part of my vision and my platform for speaking and teaching and coaching and consulting.

In conclusion, you don't have to be an expert to act like an expert, for whatever vision you have for your future.

If you need help working on these steps, we have a worksheet that will help guide you on how am I going to focus on these three steps and work towards my vision. So be sure to download that and reach out and tell us what you're working on.

Why you have to get serious about delegation

So you need to be convinced about the importance of delegation?

What would be possible if you could delegate 20% of what’s currently on your plate, personally and professionally? Find out in my friend Jenny Blake’s new course Delegation Ninja! Get $100 off with code [CAITLIN]: http://pivotmethod.com/delegate

Delegation and success

Delegation is one of those important topics because any time you talk to somebody who's successful and you ask “How do you do it all?” Well, usually their first response back is, “I don't do it all.” Right? They choose what to work on and they delegate the rest. That's why I want you to tap into delegation today, so let's do one small activity.

I want you to think about something that you hate doing, something on your plate – either work or home, something that you hate doing and despise.

You don't look forward to it all but you feel like I have to do this. Okay, that one task, write that down put it below and the comments so you can share and see that we all have similar tasks we don't like to do. Take that task and I want you to think about how you can delegate it in two ways.

Your time is valuable

I want you to think about the time it takes you to do it and the value for that. So, the time that it takes. You can do this in a couple ways. You can think about what's your hourly rate right for things you do, things people pay you to do. Even if you're making something like $10 an hour if it takes you five hours to do a task, you're already talking about $50 worth of your time. There's a very ratio aspect to that of time for money, right? But there's also value.

So when you outsource or you delegate something to somebody else, there’s a really inherent joy in being able to delegate it and you feel really good when you know you're not the one that has to do it and everybody has experienced this in their lives.

When you go out to eat at a restaurant, when you are not the one making the meal and you have this ambiance of the restaurant and the silver plate comes to you and you're like, “Oh, this tastes so good. This was a great experience.” When you break it down of “I could have made this at home for $5” or “I spent the $25 to enjoy the eating out experience,” there's inherent value that goes with that instead of just the cost breakdown.

Think about both your time and your value – the joy you're going to experience when you delegate that thing that you really hate on your list.

Figuring out what to delegate

And so, if you're stuck on “I don't know how to delegate this,” there’s the do-it-yourself option, trying to figure it out. I help clients one-on-one with finding the time and breaking down steps to make sure that you're figuring out what you need to delegate and how to do it.

But there's also a middle option that I want to share with you today.

My friend, Jenny Blake, has an awesome course called “Delegation Ninja” and she is a true delegation ninja, a bestselling author, speaker and career coach.

She has this course and in it, she's going to teach you how to save between two and five hours a week of your time which is amazing. She shows you all of her systems. I'm super proud to be an affiliate of this course (use code CAITLIN). You'll save a hundred dollars by signing up that way and you will quickly earn back the money that you're going to spend on this course by being able to save that time, right? What is your time worth?

I really want to continue the conversation about delegating with you because it’s one of my favorites!

Tell me below in the comments what you want to delegate!

How to Deal with Feeling Guilty About Delegating Tasks

Do you feel guilty when you try to delegate around the house? Watch this video for some inspiration on how to approach it from a healthy perspective.

We’ve been talking a lot about purposeful productivity and what to do when we’re overwhelmed with our to-do list and how to break things down, in general, to make it more manageable in our everyday lives. One of the things that keep coming up is to delegate tasks and to come up with the things that we don’t have to be the one person that does it every single time, in our relationships, in our family lives, at work – all kinds of examples.

But a really great point that one of the people in our community brought up, thank you Maeve, she brought up “How do I deal with the guilt associated with delegation?” And so, her examples were things like, “I feel guilty when I give this task to another person because I feel like I could be doing it or I should be the one doing it.” For all of us, we’ve all been there first of all. This is the important thing to know. Maeve’s definitely not alone. To think about the things that are happening behind this and then to apply it to our lives is where we’re going to go with it.

Identify mental blocks and societal scripts

An example in my own life would be grocery shopping and in my life, my husband and I recently switched roles on this and so I used to be the one that did most of the grocery shopping and he has recently in the past couple of months been the main one to go grocery shopping for us. I had all these mental thoughts about I should be the one to do this because I have more time. I also had a mental block behind maybe I'm better at it like, “I think I'm better at this grocery shopping thing. I should be the one to do it.”

Then, there are societal blocks or the societal scripts that we know a lot about in psychology and human development about scripts to say things like “Who does the grocery shopping in households?” And a lot of times in the commercials it looks like mom does grocery shopping or the woman in the household does grocery shopping. And then we have these roles, right? Like stereotypical roles. They don’t always follow gender lines but follow a variety of scripts.

And so, I want to challenge you today to think about what are the mental blocks I have behind this task that I want to delegate.

Recognize the positive effects of delegating

I thought about grocery shopping, "I'm better at it. I should be the one to do it because I have more time and I’ll feel guilty if I do hand it over." But instead, what happened as we made this transition, I realized when he was the one to go grocery shopping, he actually spends less money than I do which is really helpful for our budget and so actually he probably is better at it right now.

I also come at it from a positive place of how it helps me. I have more time to do a different type of task because he goes grocery shopping for us. I'm kind of coming to grips with that for whatever the task might be in your head of do you feel guilt because you're feeling like “I should be more productive with my time?” Like, if I just sat at home and said “He’s out grocery shopping and I should be the one doing that and I feel really bad that I'm not being productive right now.” That’s just negative thinking, a negative thought loop that’s getting stuck in my head over and over.

Talk to the people you delegate to

It’s also having that conversation with the other person to say “I feel guilty that this is happening. What do you think?” Often times, we’re really surprised at what people have to say back to us, right? We find that maybe he says something like “You know, I kinda like doing the grocery shopping” or “I enjoy being able to get out and about in the store.” And we’re like, “Uh, that’s kind of one of my worst nightmares.” There are all these kinds of different ways that we react to tasks and so unless we ask the person or tell them “I'm feeling guilty about this.” They may actually be able to say back to us like, “Oh, you do? Why do you feel guilty?” And so, having that conversation can help clear up a lot of issues. They may say like “I really don’t mind doing this for you because of these reasons…” So, that’s something to think about – our mental blocks that are happening and then having the conversation with the person.

Can you relate? Tell us below in the comments!