I don’t know about you, but the Facebook/Instagram/What’s App outage on Monday was a little bit of a relief. For six-plus hours there were no distractions (except for a quick foray over to Twitter to see what was up with Facebook). It conjured images of a modern-day interpretation of that Twilight Zone episode of the man who finds a stopwatch that freezes the world, while he continues to move around so he has time to get ahead.
Personal Drive + Drive to Serve + Focus
The image of no distractions has me thinking about how we build our lives, or more specifically, how we manage the day-to-day demands—from concerns about the world to running a business to meeting deadlines for that day.
That’s why I’m so excited to talk to today’s guest on Intercultural Spark, Dahlia Fahmy, founder and owner of Sports + Ortho Physical Therapy, with eight locations serving Chicagoland.
She’s driven to succeed as a businesswoman. “I just want to prove I can do it,” she says. She gets satisfaction from serving “I see people coming in not able to walk, and they go running out.” (I’m one of those people, BTW), and she brings an intense focus to the person right before her, spending easily over an hour with each client getting to the root of which muscle is causing the pain and trying different modalities to fix it.
Lack of Focus? Start with Service and Set a Timer
The connection back to the Facebook outage? We waste so much time during the day with distractions—checking social media, watching a video clip or TV and 24-hour news cycles. We are barraged with infinite input. Our brains are wired to process, categorize and respond to everything. Yet much of it is inane, or awful, or out of our control.
So when overwhelmed with all that you need or want to (including saving the world), rather than going big, go small. Pick one thing to do, set a timer for 20 minutes, and do only that one thing. For Dahlia that might mean focusing on the one client before her.
What does that look like for you? Each one reaches one. What can you do in the next 20 minutes that is meaningful and in the service of someone else?