Attention Rich

Twice a year Bill Gates has made a point of taking a Think Week - a week where he isolates himself from all daily distractions and focus on strategic thinking. Can you do the same? Can you afford not to? If the man running one of the worlds largest companies can take a week off without the company falling apart, you should be able to as well.

In this attention and interruption age I’m going to suggest that you everything you can to eliminate all distractions. Here are the ground rules:

1. No communication gadgets. No email, no cellphone, no Blackberry, etc.

2. No Internet access.

3. Bring several carefully chosen books, but leave all magazines, newsletters and newspapers at home.

4. Bring pads of paper and your favorite writing pen.

The objective is to really focus your full attention on your business for several days without distractions. But isn’t paying attention to your business what you do 18 hours a day? Unless you are extremely disciplined, what you’re doing everyday is paying attention to a thousand tasks and details, more or less related to your business. And if you never stop to to really think about your business, this is what you will continue doing for the rest of the business’ life.

Don’t use this time to create a new information product that you can sell when you get back on Monday. Don’t even get distracted by brainstorming the details of a new product. This is the time to pay attention to what you are doing well, what you enjoy doing and what you do not like. Where is the majority of your profits are coming from and where is the majority of your time spent? Where is your time wasted? What are the sources of most of your problems and stress?

When you know the answers to these questions you can start mapping out the strategy for your company for the next year. Only after that, are you allowed to start thinking about new products and services that will fit your strategy.

By leaving all the communication gear behind your attention will not be wasted by researching your ideas online, getting distracted by other related ideas, getting disappointed by finding others who are already doing what you planned, etc. I’m not saying that you should jump into a new venture without any research, but everything has its time.

I would even suggest leaving your laptop behind. If you’re like me, you can type at least twice as fast on a keyboard than you can write with an old fashioned pen. And I’m sure you will miss the real-time spell check and the grammar suggestions. But the point of the think retreat is not to produce stacks of well written prose - it is to pay attention to what you write. When I write with a pen I find that I spend more time thinking about what I’m about to commit to paper.

Block out time for your Think Week in your calendar today. Then start thinking about the books you want to bring with you to your “desert island”. You don’t want to spend all your time reading during the think retreat, so start skimming the books ahead of time. When you find a particularly interesting section just put a post-it note on the page so you can get back to it during the Think Week.

Here is my list:

1. The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss.

2. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.

3. Faster by James Gleick.

4. Simpleology by Mark Joyner.

5. The Dip by Seth Godin.

6. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

Rich Schefren has made it his mission to encourage entrepreneurs to think strategically about their businesses. His Internet Business Manifesto Trilogy is required reading for all budding Internet entrepreneurs and you can add his latest report to that list: The Attention Age Doctrine (http://www.strategicprofits.com/doctrine/)