The dictionary definition of focus is the centre of activity, attraction or attention.
When people tell me that that they would like to improve their focus, I understand they are referring to the ability to maintain a narrow attention in a chosen direction, on a selected task for an extended period of time.
So it’s a narrow spread of attention for an extended period of time.
Whatever distracts you takes your attention off that on which you decided to focus. It widens your attention and shortens the time of it.
To the degree that you can control your thoughts you maintain your focus, you are in control.
To the degree that you cannot control your attention, you are not in control, you are at effect.
I want you to be maximally in control of your thoughts and focus.
This maximises your chances of attaining your goals nad helping others.
Setting The Stage
Our ability to concentrate is affected by our physical condition. So aim to be in optimum physical condition for maximally effective living and thinking.
Some important factors include:
– Sleep: Insufficient or poor-quality sleep impairs attention, working memory and decision-making.
– Exercise: Regular physical activity benefits cognitive function and can improve attention.
– Nutrition: Hunger, inadequate nutrition and large fluctuations in blood glucose can affect how well some people concentrate. (I read that intense thinking and memory can chew up 100 mg of B1 in 47 mminutes.)
– Hydration: Dehydration can impair cognitive performance, particularly when substantial.
– Stress: Excessive stress can consume cognitive resources that would otherwise be available for the task at hand.
External Distractions
The more opportunities you allow for external distractions in your working environment, the less you are able to maintain focus. For example:
– Mobile phone notifications.
– Incoming emails.
– People interrupting you.
– Background television or radio.
– Clutter in your working environment.
– Having multiple browser tabs open.
– Working in an environment where people expect immediate responses.
Before commencing a task, take a moment to eliminate as many potential external distractions as possible. Turn off unnecessary notifications, put your phone somewhere out of sight, and arrange your environment so that you can concentrate on the task without interruption.
Don’t Multi-Task
When you look at the desired objective, ‘maintaining a narrow spread of attention for an extended period of time’, you instantly realise that multi-tasking is the exact opposite of that.
If there is something more important than the task at hand on which you need to put attention as soon as it occurs, then recognise that is the opposite of focus and accept the trade-off.
For all other potential interruptions, aim to handle them at a time interval that suits your attention span.
The ability to focus could be described as the ability to do what you are doing when you are doing it, despite invitations to do otherwise.
This can be overdone. After all, Nero continued to play the fiddle while Rome burned. But catastrophes requiring urgent attention are by far the smallest number of distractions you will encounter.
Time Limiting
People have different lengths of time for which they can maintain optimum focus. And different times of day during which they are most alert. Learn your time of day and optimum time length for maximum focus and schedule your high value activities during your peak performance windows, taking a break to recharge your hydration/food and think of something else for a few minutes. Some of the greatest discoveries and realisations have occurred away from the work bench during just such breaks.
Internal Distractions
There are three ways to increase your cause level over internal distrations.
The basis of these strategies is the recognition that there are different parts of your mind. The mind is not your brain, it is function rather than a structure. In this article I will very briefly touch on two of the major functions of the mind.
The first is that part of the mind with which you are reading this and calculating, that with which your decide your goals in life, that is intelligent, kind, creative, logical, ethical, communicative, in fact, anything good.
The other part of the mind is the accummulation of everything bad that has ever happened to you. Every physical and emotional pain, loss, betrayal, invalidation and failure.
Because it is a function, not a structure, you cannot see it. You only feel its effect. It is what causes you to feel ‘down’, to feel distracted and to lack focus.
When you feel ‘up’ it is because the gears from the sum of your pain are disengaged from your thinking. Your mood is good, you feel happy, you do not invalidate yourself and others, you think well of others, you contemplate goals, you think positively.
You are happier and more successful the more ‘up’ you feel.
The three non-exclusive ways to increase your cause level are:
1. Is to eradicate the source of the distractions to your focus. That is optimum but it is not a quick and easy solution. It takes education, time and commitment. The discussion of it is too large for an article. It is a whole book. If you want to pursue the path to the highest possible cause level, get in touch with me.
2. Is to learn to disengage that part of the mind from which the distractions emanate so it has less effect on your thinking. One of these techniques is to go for a walk and look at things until you feel better. This is so therapeutic it has been called a near cure-all.
3. Is to learn and apply administrative and organisational techniques that increase your cause level over the source of distractions.
Because:
-they are able to be immediately implemented,
-cost nothing but a bit of effort,
-you will benefit from them while doing 1 and 2,
the administrative and organisational technique is the easist to implement. Let’s start there.
It is a lot harder to maintain focus on a vague, generalised concept than it is on a clear, precise target.
That makes the first action in improving focus to have a very clear idea of what you are trying to accomplish, the product of your efforts.
So formulate a clean, clear, concise statement of whatever it is you want to accomplish.
The next step is to identify why you want to accomplish it, your motivating desire. This beefs up your intention to attain the target which helps maintain the focus for longer.
Now you know what you want to accomplish and why, the next action is to work out the sequence of actions that will lead to its accomplishment and the product of each of those actions. This is called a sub-product list. This further narrows the spread of attention to only that specific action you are doing right now and its intended product.
You can practice doing this by making a list of the resources and sequence of actions you need to make a cup of tea or coffee.
Now you know the what, why and how of accomplishing your target. This gives you exactly on what you need to focus, one action after another.
This has not addressed that part of the mind from which resistance to you being successful emanates. So counter-intention (intention counter to your intention) can still manifest.
When you are concentrating on the task at hand you may receive a distracting thought. If you allow yourself to think on that, you become distracted and lose focus on what you want to accomplish.
On occasion you will think of something that you need to do, something you may have not documented. In this case it is perfectly acceptable to quickly make a note of that for later attention. That removes the necessity to hold it in mind so you don’t forget it, which would iteself be a distraction.
So whenever you are wanting to remain focused yet start to think of something else, the technique to apply is to revert your attention, to deliberately resume focusing again on the task immediately in front of you.
You do not need to spread your attention over all the future actions you need to take to accomplish your overall objective, just the action on which you are currently engaged.
There is a humerous yet true saying that just because someone invites you to an argument, it doesn’t mean you have to attend.
We just take that principle and apply it to distractions. Just because a thought enters your mind, it does not mean you have to entertain it.
Often times after you return to thinking of the task at hand the distracting thought comes back. In which case you just return your atttention to the task immediately in front of you.
You may have to do this multiple times. Sometimes dozens of times. But as you continue to apply this, the distracting thoughts reduce.
For many people, this will seem strange.
When we are practicing a physical skill we are used to the idea of doing the action time and again, practicing doing it until we are competent at that brushstroke, musical chord, or footwork technique.
Rarely does someone explain to us that mental techniques also require practice to acquire competence.
But if you thing back, repetition is how we learned the alphabet, our times tables etc.
Think of this technique like building a focus muscle, the more your practice it, the stonger it gets.
Unfortunately the opposite is also true. The more you allow yourself to be distracted, the weaker the focus muscle gets.
Exercise
The whole secret of improving focus is contained in choosing to build that focus muscle. Here is a practical exercise to assist with that.
A daily five-minute focus exercise
1. Decide on something you want to accomplish.
2. Write down precisely what you want to achieve.
3. Identify the first action required.
4. Remove potential distractions.
5. Spend five minutes doing nothing other than that action.
6. Whenever your attention wanders, deliberately return it.
Repeat daily, gradually increasing the exercise time.
I hope this helps.
To your health, fitness and happiness.
Tom Grimshaw
tom@tomgrimshaw.com
Further ‘Living Your Best Life’ resources:
How To Work Out Your Basic Purpose In Life:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=37862
Boosting Your Confidence:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=67246
On Bringing Order:
https://www.bringorder.info/English.html
Cultivating Life: Growing Food Sustainably:
https://www.seedtotable.com.au
How To Handle Depression – 7 Step Mini Program And Additional Steps
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=14412
My book ‘How To Live The Healthiest Life’:
https://howtolivethehealthiestlife.com/
Patience & Compassion:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=67462
On Finding your Perfect Match:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=39010
Addressing Procrastination:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=67238
How To Boost Self-Discipline:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=67086
A 4 Tier “Systems Health Triage” Model:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=65233
Effective Time Managment:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=67285
Vaccination Data and References:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=3835
Return to Wellness Protocol – Your A-Z Guide to A Complete Mind and Body Reset:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=64583
