Immersion in simple terms is deep mental involvement on a topic.
By extension, instant immersion is your ability for deep mental involvement at a moment’s notice.
Building and developing this ability can provide you a huge competitive advantage.
If you are smart, you are switching contexts several dozen times a day. A context switch can be very subtle as you move from:
a. completing that proposal to
b. making that phone call with a potential customer to
c. doing a reference check for potential employee to
d. answering that email where your expertise is called for to solve a problem to
e. taking care of the expense reports
You get the idea. It’s a bunch of things every single day and whether you want or not, if you want to be ultra-successful, you need “instant immersion” to that present context as if you need EVERYTHING you have got to make a masterpiece out of that context.
Why are we not practicing instant immersion now?
Why would we need be instantly immersed in a context?
There are several reasons. Here are a few:
1. We are caught in a trap:
We are in a trap without our knowledge. In most cases, you can get away with a mediocre output or slightly above-average output for a long time in your life – probably until you are forty when the sum of mediocrity catches up to you as a glass ceiling. So, if you can get by with partial attention, why give something complete attention?
2. We think instant immersion takes time:
We forget the “instant” part of the immersion and assume that immersing in anything will take time and time is something that you don’t have.
3. We don’t have the knowledge on how to do it:
This is not a skill that is taught in school. In fact, this was not a skill that was required of you a decade ago. If you don’t know something, how can you be an expert at it?
How can you get started with instant immersion?
Here we go:
1. It starts with awareness:
Like any skill, you need to start off with wanting to do it. The first step is to be aware of the need for that skill. You need to notice the difference between doing something with instant immersion and doing something without that practice.
2. Assign the right label to the current context:
It is hard to be present in the current context if you don’t love to be in there. Imagine you are falling in love with the current context. Imagine it is a huge privilege for you to be even be part of this. What if you considered this as a blessing to have the opportunity to work on whatever it is you are working on?
Did you observe the various labels used:
* love
* privilege
* blessing
* opportunity
Not only you may be using the above kind of labels, your labels may be something like “burden”, “drudgery”, “one more thing to do” etc.
The key is to remember that you have the CHOICE of choosing the label for the current context. It is not AUTOMATIC as much as it sounds like it.
3. Put yourself in the shoes of the person for whom the context matters most
This is the key step.
In general, every context you are entering into will have someone for whom the context matters most. If it is no one but you, then it is your family for whom the context matters most. You “doing well in life” is what they are looking for. And “doing well in life” means “doing well” in each and every context that you are present to. Usually, this makes you to be “present” to the context.
Somethings may seem trivial for you but the context happened because for someone in your life it is NOT trivial.
4. Eliminate the rest for a while
This part is hard as you are constantly bombarded with information from several sources. However, if you practice #3 well, you will find it easy to practice this step. You owe it to those for whom you being the best in this context matters a lot.
5. Gamify, if possible
You need to get this into a habit quickly. We are covering one technique in The Impact Habit but releasing that is a few months out. You can find your own ways to gamify the instant immersion experience. The goal is simple – instant immersion should be your second nature – do whatever you can to get there!
Have a great week ahead!