Latest / Spacious Success / 011 | Your FQ Matters More Than IQ – Mastering the New Currency of Success

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011 | Your FQ Matters More Than IQ – Mastering the New Currency of Success · Spacious Success

• 0:00
  Hi, it's Dr. Christy here and welcome back to Spacious Success.
• 0:11
  Today I want to talk about something that's quietly eroding your wellbeing and possibly
• 0:16
  putting a dent in your performance and productivity.
• 0:19
  That is your attention.
• 0:21
  If you've ever felt scattered or felt like your day just disappears into emails, messages
• 0:27
  and endless tabs open, this episode will help you to make sense of it.
• 0:33
  By the end of this episode, you'll know why distraction isn't your fault, how it's
• 0:38
  denting your productivity, and how to start reclaiming your focus, what I call your FQ,
• 0:44
  in a world that's been designed to hijack it.
• 0:47
  So let's get into it.
• 0:53
  Hi, I'm Dr. Christy Goodwin, a neuroperformance scientist, speaker and executive coach
• 0:58
  who learned the hard way that chasing success can come at a cost.
• 1:04
  After burnout landed me in hospital, I made it my mission to help ambitious women who
• 1:09
  are done trading their health and happiness for high performance.
• 1:14
  On Spacious Success, I share science-backed strategies and real stories to help you flourish
• 1:22
  as a female at work and beyond so you can stop paying the success tax.
• 1:30
  It was January 2015.
• 1:32
  I just landed back in Sydney from a speaking engagement in Singapore for Apple.
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  I was exhausted, I was jet lagged, but I was eager to get home and to relieve my husband
• 1:42
  and mother-in-law who'd been helping with our two sons whilst I was away for two nights.
• 1:48
  Our oldest son was already at preschool by the time I arrived home, so it was just me
• 1:52
  and our 15-month-old son Billy at home that day.
• 1:56
  All he wanted to do that day was have mummy cuddles.
• 1:59
  It was the first time we'd been apart for two nights, and so I knew he wasn't going
• 2:03
  to have his expected nap that day.
• 2:06
  While we were cold up on the lounge, having these cuddles, I heard the constant ping of emails
• 2:11
  on my phone.
• 2:12
  I decided I'd crack open my laptop, thinking I'll get on top of things.
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  I knew I was confirmed by this point there was no way Billy was going to have his nap
• 2:22
  that day, and I had ambitiously, some might say foolishly, scheduled a Skype call.
• 2:27
  Yes, 2015 I was still doing Skype calls during his nap time, so I thought I'll open my
• 2:32
  laptop or send an email and I'll postpone that meeting, that Skype meeting.
• 2:37
  But then I got distracted by the avalanche of emails, and then it happened.
• 2:43
  Billy climbed up beside me, and I got distracted by my inbox.
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  And in slow motion, I watched him tumble off the lounge face-first.
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  There was silence first, then there was the scream, the blood, his lemon-coloured t-shirt
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  turned crimson.
• 3:00
  The cream carpet, well, it looked like a crime scene, ended up in emergency.
• 3:04
  His lip had to be glued back together.
• 3:07
  He still carries a small scar this day on his lip, and honestly, so do I.
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  That scar is a tangible reminder of the day that I let my attention get hijacked, from
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  the person who needed it the most at that time.
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  Now, to ease my mother's guilt, I will say that the identical accident had happened just
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  a couple of weeks earlier when my husband was dutifully supervising him.
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  So I'm just going to suggest that his severe injury was a reopening of an existing food.
• 3:38
  But that moment is one I'll never forget.
• 3:41
  It actually became the catalyst for my deep research into why and how technology hooks
• 3:47
  us, why it distracts us, why it diverts our attention, why it's so hard to resist, and
• 3:53
  what can we do about it, given that we're now living in a digitally intense world.
• 3:58
  You see, our attention's under siege, and here's what we know.
• 4:02
  We are now living in what's being referred to as an attention economy.
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  Your focus feels trillions of dollars each year in tech companies.
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  It's been denied and I've had an engineer that way.
• 4:14
  Technology you see taps into our most basic psychological drivers for connection, competence
• 4:19
  and control.
• 4:20
  This is what we call self-determination theory, and it explains that as humans, we really
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  only have three basic psychological needs to connect, to feel confident in control, and
• 4:31
  the digital world taps into those so neatly.
• 4:34
  The technologies we use both for work and leisure have some deliberate design techniques.
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  That red notification bubble, variable rewards, they're the same tricks that poker machines
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  use to keep us hooked.
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  We get a dopamine hijack, every ping, like new message gives us a tiny hit that keeps
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  us coming back for more and more, even for our teams and Slack messages.
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  In the online world, there are no stopping cues.
• 5:02
  Unlike books or movies, there's no verent.
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  It's always just one more, one more episode.
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  This is the state of insufficiency, and this is why many of us engage in revenge, bedtime
• 5:12
  procrastination, watching just one more Netflix episode.
• 5:16
  So have you ever gone into your inbox just for a quick message and surfaced 45 minutes
• 5:22
  later, having not just looked at that email, but perhaps bought something on an online
• 5:26
  store, thanks to a carefully curated algorithm.
• 5:31
  Technology is engineered to distract you and to divert your attention.
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  The cost of distraction you see just isn't the time lost.
• 5:40
  I also call it the success tax, where we sacrifice our health while being in relationships
• 5:46
  for achievement.
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  And the science is sobering.
• 5:50
  Every single interruption we have, be it a thought, a distracting colleague or a digital
• 5:55
  distraction, is around 23 minutes in loss productivity.
• 6:00
  Court as old, the stress hormone shrinks our working memory, and this is released when
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  we are distracted.
• 6:06
  Chronic interruptions drain your prefrontal cortex, that part of your brain that's often described
• 6:12
  as the CEO or the air traffic control system.
• 6:15
  And the result of constantly being distracted, we're depleted, we're frazzled, and we're
• 6:20
  stuck in what I call low res mode.
• 6:26
  Women experience this often more intensely because of the digital double burden.
• 6:32
  Not only do we have work emails and teams chats, but we're also gifted with things like
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  school apps, class and sport, WhatsApp groups, birthday party, RSVPs, dentist reminders
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  and bill reminders that come through on our phones.
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  Family WhatsApp threads that will coordinate the upcoming family gathering.
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  Research calls this the gender wellbeing gap.
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  Women are much more likely to feel stressed, exhausted and burnt out.
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  Layer in hormonal shifts in perimenopause and menopause, disrupted sleep and the pressure
• 7:12
  to hold it all together, to do it all, well, it's nearly any wonder that so many ambitious
• 7:20
  women feel like we're just constantly stuck in survival mode.
• 7:25
  This is why I always remind my clients, it's not you, it's not.
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  You're operating in a system that was designed to keep you distracted and dependent on it.
• 7:36
  I've made the mistake of muting a chatty WhatsApp group.
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  I thought it would save me, would be a sanity saver, only to miss a really important
• 7:46
  message about a change of date for an excursion.
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  So a total digital detox and cutting ourselves off isn't the solution.
• 7:55
  How can you reclaim your attention?
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  Well, here are four practical science back ways to take that control of the digital demands
• 8:03
  in your life and help you to optimize your FQ.
• 8:07
  I have three golden rules for notifications.
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  You have to set your digital guardrails, let your partner, your team, your kids know what
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  your boundaries are.
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  Number one, disable non-essential notifications.
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  Do you really need email and social media notifications?
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  My golden rule number two is to bundle or batch your notifications so they don't dribble
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  in and distract you throughout the day.
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  Number eight, when you want to get the WhatsApp or Teams notifications and create VIP lists.
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  So when you activate focus mode or do not disturb mode, everybody else gets blocked apart
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  from your VIPs.
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  Maybe it's your children's school, your aging parents, your partner or a work colleague.
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  The next thing we need to do is to monotask, not multitask.
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  We have to protect our deep work time.
• 8:58
  We have to do sprints or what I call a digital dash working for roughly 90 minutes and
• 9:04
  then having some recovery.
• 9:06
  Full attention needs us to monotask, not to constantly be tasks switching and multitasking.
• 9:13
  We need tech free moments, device free dinners, a digital curfew before bed, even 10 minutes
• 9:20
  of foam free presence with your kids or your partner.
• 9:24
  These micro breaks buffer your nervous system.
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  This isn't about quitting tech, it's not about doing a digital detox, it's just about
• 9:31
  being more intentional and more conscious and using technology on our terms.
• 9:39
  That day with Billy, it changed me.
• 9:42
  It forced me to see that my attention had been hijacked, that I was in control of my
• 9:46
  FQ and that I wasn't a low niber.
• 9:50
  If you felt scattered, depleted, hear this out, you're not broken.
• 9:55
  You're just operating in a digitally intense environment that was engineered to steal you
• 10:02
  of your focus.
• 10:04
  The good news is you could claim it.
• 10:07
  Until then, guard your focus like your most important precious asset that it is.
• 10:14
  Thank you for listening.