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A transcript of this talk is below:

A transcript of this talk is below:

<blockquote>Madison Lukaczyk

<blockquote>I want to start off with a quick question just to get us thinking on a similar page. Has anyone else kind of gone into work expecting to do one thing, focus on something, and you kind of end up just answering Slack messages or emails, or talking to colleagues. So I can tell you after doing this analysis I have maybe too many of these days.

 

I want to start off with a quick question just to get us thinking on a similar page. Has anyone else kind of gone into work expecting to do one thing, focus on something, and you kind of end up just answering Slack messages or emails, or talking to colleagues. So I can tell you after doing this analysis I have maybe too many of these days.

And I realized as a data scientist, it’s important to me that I’m focusing on things like building algorithms, or dashboards and analysis. These exercises that utilize my core skills and continued to build me as a person, well that I want to be. And I take steps every day to make sure that I’m keeping focused on these things, like I’ve totally eliminated news, websites, social media sites during the day.  

And I realized as a data scientist, it’s important to me that I’m focusing on things like building algorithms, or dashboards and analysis. These exercises that utilize my core skills and continued to build me as a person, well that I want to be. And I take steps every day to make sure that I’m keeping focused on these things, like I’ve totally eliminated news, websites, social media sites during the day.  

But then I have these things like business communication tools that are an essential part of my day, but they can also be a huge distraction from my more core difficult work. So I realized focus is something that I want to quantify for myself, because I want to keep myself in line and making sure that I’m focusing on what’s meaningful every day.

But then I have these things like business communication tools that are an essential part of my day, but they can also be a huge distraction from my more core difficult work. So I realized focus is something that I want to quantify for myself, because I want to keep myself in line and making sure that I’m focusing on what’s meaningful every day.

So, I decided to take that view and wrap it up even further into a focus score. And I created this focus score with this computation, where every hour that I spend focusing I give myself one point. And some days that can be kind of hard to reach, so I gave myself a quarter of a point for every 30 minutes focus that I reached. And every time I go past an hour, those every five minutes I give myself a bonus of a tenth of a point.

So, I decided to take that view and wrap it up even further into a focus score. And I created this focus score with this computation, where every hour that I spend focusing I give myself one point. And some days that can be kind of hard to reach, so I gave myself a quarter of a point for every 30 minutes focus that I reached. And every time I go past an hour, those every five minutes I give myself a bonus of a tenth of a point.

So this is what that week kind of looked like from the prior slide in terms of the focus score. And I can tell you that was a fairly good week because in the past two months you know, my focus meter has definitely gone up but it’s something that is fluctuating. And what I learned from this is that just having the score available to me helped me realize how kind of this shallow work of going to Slack can be really enticing when you’re trying to focus on something really difficult. Because Slack is still kind of work, right, but when I’m trying to figure out an algorithm it’s just so tempting to flip over to Slack. So it helped me become a lot more self-aware when I start feeling that feeling of, I don’t want to focus on this because it’s too hard.

So this is what that week kind of looked like from the prior slide in terms of the focus score. And I can tell you that was a fairly good week because in the past two months you know, my focus meter has definitely gone up but it’s something that is fluctuating. And what I learned from this is that just having the score available to me helped me realize how kind of this shallow work of going to Slack can be really enticing when you’re trying to focus on something really difficult. Because Slack is still kind of work, right, but when I’m trying to figure out an algorithm it’s just so tempting to flip over to Slack. So it helped me become a lot more self-aware when I start feeling that feeling of, I don’t want to focus on this because it’s too hard.

So, I also realized that I have skill to focus on a weekend, so I should just be able to do that during the week. And just a couple of things that I have found that has helped my focus score so far is getting in a daily routine in the morning of just starting a focused session for myself and telling myself I don’t need to talk to anyone right now like, I have the full day to do that. I’ll get to it when I get to it. Eliminating notifications is super helpful, easy and yeah, just being able to reflect on the score has been really great.

So, I also realized that I have skill to focus on a weekend, so I should just be able to do that during the week. And just a couple of things that I have found that has helped my focus score so far is getting in a daily routine in the morning of just starting a focused session for myself and telling myself I don’t need to talk to anyone right now like, I have the full day to do that. I’ll get to it when I get to it. Eliminating notifications is super helpful, easy and yeah, just being able to reflect on the score has been really great.  

So that’s about it. There’s my contact, and a couple of people I want to acknowledge because I wouldn’t have gotten this presentation to where it is now. A couple of great references if anyone is interested in learning more about the idea of focus, these books inspired this kind of thought process for me.</blockquote>

So that’s about it. There’s my contact, and a couple of people I want to acknowledge because I wouldn’t have gotten this presentation to where it is now. A couple of great references if anyone is interested in learning more about the idea of focus, these books inspired this kind of thought process for me.</blockquote>