Andy Neary (Friday Bullpen Sessions, Episode 13) gives a short coaching talk about improving focus while working from home. He uses a baseball pitching anecdote—drawing an X in the dirt and briefly looking away to re-center—as a metaphor and practical cue for taking short breaks. He recommends scheduling work in 90-minute focused blocks with 15–20 minute breaks to refresh energy, reduce overwork, and increase productivity.
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Good morning. It is Friday. You know what that means? It is time for Friday bullpen sessions. My name is Andy Neary, and this is episode Lucky Number 13. Today I want to talk to you about focus. We are in a new world. We're in a new environment. The way business is done has changed overnight, not only for the time being, but I see in the foreseeable future, if not permanently, you might be working from home for the first time. You're not used to it. It's easy to be distracted. You're not focused like you normally were at the office. And so today I want to talk about how you can make sure that you are staying laser focused throughout your days so that you can be just as productive at home as you were in the office. And hey, for you, it might be that you're more productive at home. And you realize that, you know what, when we get back to whatever this new sense of normal is, you don't need to go back to the office. You can actually work from home. But my guess is that you might be struggling a little bit with this focus, with being productive. So I want to share something that I used as a pitcher in baseball that helped me to refocus on each and every pitch so that I could be accurate. Because I think it's going to help teach you a lesson on how you can be laser focused with working from home. You see, when I was a pitcher, one thing you were taught was to make sure that you don't just stare at the catcher's mitt when you go in the wind up and you get ready to throw a pitch. Because if you just keep your eyes focused in on that catcher's mitt, you're eventually going to lose focus. Things might get a little blurry. You might have noticed the same thing. When you try to focus on an object for too long, it starts to get blurry. Right? Well, the same thing holds true when you're on the mount. If you just focus on the catcher's mitt and you do it for too long, the mitt starts to get blurry and your odds of being less accurate with your throw goes up. And hey, listen, in the game of baseball, you miss the catcher's mitt by six inches, it can be the difference between a ground ball double play and a home run that could lose the game. And so one thing that I was taught, one little tool that I used to make sure that I could refocus and be laser focused on the catcher's mitt was that when I went into my Wind up, I would take my focus, my eyes off the catcher's mitt for a split second. And just that split second of me looking somewhere else, coming back to the catcher's mitt, allowed me to refocus, get that laser focus in on the catcher's mitt. It looked clear and it allowed me to be a lot more accurate with my throws. And so what I actually did is each and every inning I would come out to the mound, I would draw an X in the dirt on a 45 degree angle to my right from the pitching rubber so that when I would go in my wind up and I hit a certain point in the wind up, I would actually look down at that X for a split second. And then when I looked back at the catcher's mitt, I had that laser focus again. And I share this with you because when you're working from home, you do have to take your eyes off your work for a split second. But that split second might be 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 or 20 minutes. My point is this. Working from home, I actually see more people working more hours now than they actually did when they were in an office setting. Why? You're working out of fear, you're working out of anxiety. Work is always there because now you're working from home. Listen, you have to give yourself the space to take breaks, to take your eyes off the catcher's mitt, if you will, so that when you come back to your work, you're focused, you're re energized, and you have that laser focus so that you can be productive throughout the day. So my advice is this, start being more effective with how you time block your days. Listen, the mind can't work on something and be focused on something for more than 90 minutes. So do not be time blocking anything for more than 90 minutes throughout your day. In fact, what I would be doing is time blocking your entire day and 90 minute chunks. And then in between each and every one of those chunks, give yourself a 15 or 20 minute break to go for a walk, to get outside. If you're in warm weather, enjoy the sunshine so that when you come back to that next block of time, you're refocused, you're ready to go, you're re energized and you can give your best. So when I was on the mound, it was looking down at that X for you and your business. It's giving yourself the space to get out, to take a break, refresh, re, energize, so you can bring your best throughout the day. If you do that, I promise you, you won't be working those long hours. You will get more done in less time and heck again, when we get back to this new sense of normal or some kind of normal, you may realize you want to keep working from home the way it is. So hope that helps. Get out there. Start time blocking. Use this little tip to refocus your mind, refocus your energy throughout the day, and let's go make it happen. Have a great weekend and we'll talk to you next week.
