A new device that will open up conversations you’ve never had before.

I spent four days in the Japanese Alps one summer, away from distractions. The irony of stepping away from work is that my brain seems to make more connections and gain far more clarity.

Two new friends in the Hakuba mountains felt the same way.

Along with Yerica and Ahmed, from South Korea and the UAE respectively, we designed a prototype of an idea that will allow us to have this feeling of flow and deep thinking whenever we want it.

It’s called the Hakuba Phone.

Your regular smartphone is always an option to have around. It can receive and send calls and messages to anyone, and they can send alerts and notifications whenever it suits them. It beams your location and status to thousands without you asking it to.

The Hakuba Phone only does one thing - whatever you’ve decided you want to build, do or achieve.

A new school to open? A presentation to complete? A party to organise? It doesn’t matter what the big thing needing done is - once you’ve written it to the front of the Hakuba Phone that is all it will allow you to do.

The job to be done might normally take weeks, but with the Hakuba Phone eliminating distraction you’ll be able to complete it in days.

But here’s the catch: you don’t get your iPhone (or other smartphone) for the whole time. And that means your family, friends and colleagues don’t get that ability to interrupt you, either.

It’ll annoy some of them. Some might think it’s totally unreasonable when you explain the new phone you’re using for a few days or weeks.

And another catch: your whole team have to agree to use a Hakuba Phone, too.

It sounds like a silly idea (and the Hakuba Phone is nothing more than two bits of plastic held together with masking tape and a post-it). But the idea is completely sensible.

Focussing on one really important job is better than attempting to undertake many less important jobs at the same time.

Focusing on one major job at a time tends to give you greater focus and a greater sense of flow meaning you can achieve more, better, faster.

And even better is what happens if you don’t choose the Hakuba Phone.

If your team experiences tensions about the choice to focus then there might be a discussion to facilitate around the role of trust and credibility in the organisation. Maybe there is a perception that some people’s interruptions are permissible and other people’s interruptions are a distraction. Or that ‘my work is less important than the boss’s work’.

Why is that? And is it resolvable by communicating more clearly with each other about our need and desire to switch off and ship our ideas?