7 Simple Steps for Achieving Focus
In the modern age, it isn’t what you know or even who you know — it’s how you filter out what you don’t want to know that makes the difference. We live in an era of unparalleled choice and infinite distraction. It is a hypertextual world, where one thing leads immediately onto the next. We collect thoughts in our heads like tabs in our browsers, until we become overhwelmed, leading to stress and a gnawing sense of vagueness.
Vagueness is fatal to the man of action. He needs clarity and sharp wits — otherwise he risks falling into the intellectual wasteland of default behaviour. To avoid such a calamitous end, I have put together a handy guide to regaining your focus in the age of distraction.
1. Get enough sleep
When it comes to sleep, people are different. Albert Einstein slept 11 hours a night if he was working on a difficult problem. Buckmister Fuller, by contrast, slept three hours a day. Both did pretty well in their respective fields. Personally, I find a solid 8 hours to be sufficient for maximum clarity, anything less and I find myself indulging in default behaviour.
2. Avoid default behaviour
The definition of default behaviour is where you do something you don’t particularly want to do without thinking about it. This could be checking email, reading your rss feeds, watching television or scanning the news. You do it just because it’s one of those things you do.
Unfortunately, it sends a message to the unconscious to focus on distraction and before you know it you’ve spent a whole day idly pressing f5 in the hope that some site will have been updated. Instead, make a conscious decision to make a good start and do what you really want to do from the off.
3. Create the right conditions
It sounds paradoxical, but unless you can focus it’s impossible to work out what you want to focus on.
- If you are in a noisy environment, find quiet or wear earplugs.
- If you are working on a computer, close all extraneous programmes.
- If you are in a messy environment, clear a space.
- If you are hungry, have some fruit.
- If you are thirsty, get a cup of tea.
- If you are cold, put a jumper on.
Don’t worry if it is still too noisy/messy/cold etc, it’ll never be absolutely perfect, just write down the annoyance on a note pad and get it out of your head.
4. Clear the mind
The conscious mind is an incredible thing, but it can only hold the equivalent of seven bits of information at one time. If your mind is cluttered with things you need to do, you’ll never be able to focus. Write it down on a notepad. Make an agreement with yourself to think about it later. Get it out of your head.
5. Choose a project
Now that you have calm, now that you can hear yourself think, what are you going to do? There are probably a million things you could do, each one competing for attention, you just have to decide which one is most important. If it is a project that you find overwhelming (like, say, writing a book), break it down until it isn’t.
6. Break it down
Breaking a project down into doable sub-projects is the essence of focus. It allows you to stop worrying about the irrelevant. Breaking the sub-project down into a physical next action is the essence of flow. Now you can do something, rather than just thinking about it. You can throw the full force of your mind behind doing one thing really well rather than not doing lots of things badly.
7. Flow
Everyone has had that feeling of being absolutely absorbed in an activity. You forget about the clock, forget about other stuff you need to do, forget about tiredness, and simply lose yourself in the moment. This state of flow is the highest form of focus. In flow, we are happier and more intelligent, any sense of self-doubt or lack of self-esteem disappears. The easiest way of obtaining it is to remind yourself of a previous flow experience. How did you feel? How did you hold yourself? The more vivid your memory, the closer to flow you are, and the closer you come to being truly focused.
Let me know whether or not they work for you in the comments box below. And send me your tips for achieving focus.