Cultivating Genuine Focus丨5Y View

If you want to create anything of excellence, you must master the art of focus. As Einstein said, "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

How to distance yourself from noise and cultivate focus — this article offers several approaches. Sometimes we want to focus but are plagued by procrastination; inspiration can bring focus, but focus doesn't depend on inspiration — you need a healthy relationship with it; and clear, compelling values are the ultimate source of focus and motivation.

Hope the article inspires you :)

Reprinted from 36Kr's Shenyi Bureau

Original: https://36kr.com/p/2411711937553411

Most people think of attention as a form of willpower — the ability to keep your mind on the present when it wants to wander elsewhere. But this is only a tiny part of what attention entails, arguably the least important part.

Long-term focus requires long-term habits. If you want to create excellent work, you must master the art of focus. To do this, you need to cultivate the right habits.

Here are several habits of highly focused people. Whatever your work, these will help you become more focused and achieve outstanding results.

1. Productive Procrastination

At first glance, "productive" and "procrastination" seem like opposites. After all, procrastination is commonly seen as one of the reasons people struggle to concentrate.

But what if procrastination itself isn't the real problem? What if the real issue is that people don't know how to procrastinate the right way?

Productive procrastination means cultivating a set of activities you can procrastinate with — activities that, in the long run, make you highly effective. For example: although my main work is writing, I occasionally procrastinate. Whatever writing goals or tasks I've set for myself that morning, I'll say "to hell with it" and immerse myself in something else that seems more interesting — usually reading or web design.

Even though I'm avoiding work, both reading and web design benefit my work in the long term. Reading, for instance, prepares me for future articles. Web design makes articles more readable, more enjoyable, and easier to share — all of which helps my writing.

But here's the real secret of productive procrastination: when you allow yourself to procrastinate on small things, you rarely procrastinate on big things.

The urge to procrastinate is normal. It's often your brain's natural craving for novelty and stimulation. Truly productive people embrace procrastination rather than fight it.

When you stop wasting enormous mental energy resisting the urge to procrastinate, and stop criticizing yourself for it, you'll find that after a brief bout of productive procrastination, it's much easier to return to work quickly and effortlessly.

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

— Walt Disney

2. Ruthlessly Eliminate Distractions

Focus is a subtraction problem, not an addition problem.

Whether it's Facebook notifications on your phone, a colleague dropping by your office to chat, or a new game on your iPad, nothing destroys focus and attention quite like distraction.

Unfortunately, most people assume distractions are inevitable, and the best way to stay focused is to resist them. This means they think of focus as something you do, something that requires willpower. But this is a losing strategy.

Stop trying to resist distractions. Instead, work ruthlessly to prevent them from arising in the first place.

Highly focused people know that while some distractions are unavoidable, many can be prevented if you're willing to make some hard choices.

For example, if I need to write seriously in the morning, I'll leave my phone in the car, close every application on my computer except my writing software, and draw the curtains. This may seem extreme, but it's human nature — we're far worse at dealing with distractions than we like to imagine.

If you truly want to improve your focus, work hard to eliminate distractions.

Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly. After all, it's your masterpiece.

— Nathan W. Morris

3. Be Gentle with Your Mistakes

Being harsh with yourself is a short-term strategy with disastrous long-term consequences.

Growing up, most of us learned that the way to motivate ourselves was to be hard on ourselves. We were taught that unless we were extremely strict and demanding with ourselves, we'd end up weak and falling short of our goals.

This stems from the mistaken belief that fear is an effective motivator. While fear can get you to act in the short term, over time it tends to undermine confidence and discourage you.

More importantly, if you rely too heavily on fear as motivation, it even loses its short-term effectiveness over time.

This leaves most people in a dangerous position when trying to stay focused:

1. Like investing, putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea.
2. This strategy actually doesn't work anymore. Especially without external accountability, fear-based motivation is quite ineffective when you're trying to focus on tasks.
3. The side effects are catastrophic. Constant self-criticism not only leads to anxiety, stress, and low self-esteem, but often kills whatever motivation you already had.

Highly focused, productive people understand that while self-criticism is tempting, it only undermines your ability to stay focused and do your best work.

You've already fallen... how does kicking yourself make it any easier to get back up?

In the face of adversity or mistakes, don't be hard on yourself. Cultivate self-compassion instead: if you get distracted and lose focus temporarily, gently remind yourself to return to work and refocus.

If you feel the urge to procrastinate, calmly remind yourself that wanting to procrastinate isn't wrong. Everyone feels this way.

If you forget a goal or task one day, acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes, make a note to yourself, and devise a better reminder strategy for your work.

Think of it this way: if a good friend told you they'd gotten distracted or lost focus, how would you respond?

Most likely, you wouldn't start criticizing them for being weak and undisciplined. Instead, you'd offer a word or two of sympathetic encouragement without making a big deal of it.

Why not do the same for yourself?

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.

— Albert Einstein

4. Use Inspiration, But Don't Depend on It

Inspiration is like extra credit: nice to have, but never to be relied upon.

One characteristic of highly focused people is their healthy relationship with inspiration.

First, never take it for granted. Don't believe you need inspiration or motivation to work. Believe that you can do good work regardless of how you feel — especially if you've built the right habits that make it easy to start working and stay focused.

Inspiration brings focus doesn't mean focus depends on inspiration.

Second, when inspiration does strike, they make the most of it. For example, if you sit down to work and find yourself in a state of flow, riding a wave of creativity, do everything you can to maintain that state.

Don't stop working just because your scheduled time is up. Cancel meetings, postpone secondary tasks, and capitalize on the inspiration.

Never waste inspiration. It might not come back for a while.

Finally, highly focused people know that the relationship between feeling and action runs both ways. Feeling motivated obviously leads to high-quality focus and excellent work, but the reverse is also true: focus and excellent work often generate motivation and even inspiration.

For example, say you want to write a novel... If you only write when inspired, even after a year you might not have produced much.

On the other hand, if you write every day regardless of how you feel, even if it's just a few hundred words, you'll find that amazing quantities can yield some real gems. Once you see those excellent passages on paper, you'll be motivated to write even more.

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.

— Stephen King

5. Clarify Your Values

Clear, compelling values are the ultimate source of focus and motivation.

You can arm yourself with all the best techniques, tricks, tools, and technologies, but nothing matters more than the quality of your work. If you're constantly doing things you don't care about, staying focused will always be difficult.

Doing the right work can put you in a state of focus almost effortlessly. Think about it... children don't have to force themselves to concentrate when playing video games. If you love playing basketball, you probably don't need to exert much effort to stay focused throughout an entire game.

Focused people understand this simple truth:

The real secret to staying focused is committing to what you value.

Now, we can't spend all day playing basketball or video games. Fortunately, doing what you value doesn't mean only doing what you're completely passionate about.

Many aspects of our work contain deep value. If you're willing to look closely and distinguish carefully, you'll find profound value embedded within.

For example, in my writing process, I usually enjoy the act of writing itself, and its value is clear to me, so focusing on writing isn't difficult. But marketing and distributing articles is another matter... I don't find posting on social media to have any direct or obvious value, for instance.

However, when I take time to clarify what I value about writing, I realize that what I truly value is getting my ideas in front of more people. This means there's powerful value embedded in this work I enjoy less. I just need to spend time understanding it and reminding myself of it. When I do this, it becomes much easier to focus and persist.

If you spend time clarifying the values behind your work, focus will take care of itself.

The best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

— Theodore Roosevelt

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