Focus

Attention.

It comes from the Latin attendere. It literally means to reach or stretch toward.

Remember: How we deploy our attention literally determines what we see.

As Yoda says: Your focus is your reality.

Fruitless rumination vs. productive reflection.

What’s the difference?

When we ruminate, the same thought enters our minds again and again and again—we get all stressed out but make no progress on a solution. (Remember: The word ruminate comes from what a COW does with its cud—chewing it, swallowing it, regurgitating it and repeating that process! <— Not quite a model of how we want to show up psychologically. :0)

With productive reflection, on the other hand, we make progress on actually SOLVING the issue. We figure out what we can do about our challenges.

Jason Selk, one of the world’s leading mental toughness coaches, talks a lot about what he calls “Relentless Solution Focus.” Here’s how he puts it in Organize Tomorrow Today: “Strong, resilient people have what we call a ‘Relentless Solution Focus,’ or RSF. If a person with a great RSF was in the same situation and lost that big client, he or she wouldn’t be some kind of emotionless robot—the loss would sting. But the immediate, laser-sharp focus would be on finding the solution path, and doing it in less than sixty seconds.

We say ‘solution path’ because many, many problems aren’t solved with one lightning strike of an idea, obviously. A solution is a process, and there are steps to that process. In RSF, your goal when presented with a problem is to identify one step within sixty seconds that you can take that will make the situation better—even if only by a small increment of improvement. RSF is not about finding the ‘perfect’ solution but, rather, about just identifying some kind of improvement. It’s called the ‘+1 solution,’ because any improvement whatsoever to the current situation is part of a solution. The +1 concept has been credited numerous times with making the previously deemed impossible actually possible.”

Anything stressing you out these days?

Are you ruminating about it or productively reflecting?

How about using your attention wisely to cultivate a Relentless Solution Focus?

Let’s find a little +1 solution to your challenge right now…

What’s ONE little thing you can do to make the situation just a little better?

Identify it. And do it. (And, repeat THAT process rather than the regurgitation. :)

Two things here.

First: The top-down, voluntary, active ability to FOCUS our attention is (of course) ESSENTIAL to excellence. But, so is the ability to turn that part of our minds OFF and allow for a more bottom-up, open awareness.

If we’re constantly (!) ON—doing our Deep Work and then filling up the rest of our time responding to the never-ending onslaught of emails, texts, and push notifications—we’re never going to give ourselves the chance to fully recuperate.

Seneca talked about the same challenge 2,000 years ago. Here’s how he puts it in On the Shortness of Life: “The mind should not be kept continuously at the same pitch of concentration, but given amusing diversions. …

Our minds must relax: they will rise better and keener after a rest. Just as you must not force fertile farmland, as uninterrupted productivity will soon exhaust it, so constant effort will sap our mental vigour, while a short period of rest and relaxation will restore our powers. Unremitting effort leads to a kind of mental dullness and lethargy.”

I just did a mid-year (June 2016) optimizing audit on my life. A key insight was doing a better job of deliberately training my recovery. That passage from Seneca came to mind.

Seneca talks abut how the Roman senate (and some of Rome’s leading thinkers) would not take on new issues after the “tenth hour.” They’d turn their minds off from the big stuff and give it a chance to rest so they could show up the next day ready to rock.

For those following along (see Notes on Take a Nap, Change Your Life) you may recall that the word “siesta” is derived from the Roman’s word for their sixth hour “sexta”—which corresponds with our noon and was, in their masterpiece day calendar, the time for rest.

So, our tenth hour is 4:00 P.M. That’s my new “shut-down complete” time—no more dopamine-hits online, no more focused thinking. A walk, some qi gong, a hike. Whatever. Time for some recovery/open thinking.

That’s part 1. We need to turn off our focused brains.

Part 2? According to some compelling research on “attention restoration theory” out of the University of Michigan (which we talk about in Creativity on Demand), the best way to rest is to get outside into NATURE.

Remember: We will NOT experience the deep recovery we need by checking email, surfing the Web, playing video games and otherwise jacking ourselves up with more dopamine! :0

So, how about you? How can you optimize here a little more?

P.S. Goleman makes the point that oscillating active + open focus is also key to CREATIVITY!

That’s from a section called “Willpower Is Destiny.”

Walter Mischel is the brilliant researcher who spent 40+ years studying willpower and brought us The Marshmallow Test in which preschool kids were offered one marshmallow now or two if they could wait twenty minutes.

As we discuss in the Notes on that great book + extensively in Willpower 101, whether or not a preschooler was able to delay gratification predicted their SAT scores a decade later and their body mass index DECADES later. (Crazy.)

The trick was to be able to COOL the immediate impulse. Kids who were good at that, got the bonus, those who weren’t, didn’t.

As Goleman tells us, the ability to demonstrate this precocious willpower relied on their ability to wisely FOCUS.

• Step 1. Take your attention off the temptation.
• Step 2. Keep your focus elsewhere.
• Step 3. Stay focused on your goal in the future.

Focus. Focus. Focus.

It’s the heart of willpower—which is the engine to reaching your destiny.

That’s from a section on “Smart Practice.”

As you know, I love Anders Ericsson and his research on what makes experts so great.

In our Notes + Interview on Peak, we chat about the fact that simple repetition is NOT enough to reach the highest levels of our potential.

We need to engage in purposeful practice which has four key attributes:

1. Goal: We need to know how we’d like to be able to perform on a very high level AND we need a specific goal for that training session.
2. Focus: We need to be super focused during our practice. If we’re distracted rather than intensely focusing, we’re not getting better.
3. Feedback: We need to get immediate feedback on whether or not we’re hitting our goal so we can adjust our performance as necessary.
4. Exit Comfort Zone: All growth occurs OUTSIDE our comfort zone. That’s the only place our body can adapt to the stress of leaving homeostasis and build a new set of skills. Period.

And… Before we even try to get better we need to know we CAN get better. That requires us to see that we *all* have “The Gift”—the gift to deliberately train our capacities to perform at an extraordinarily high level. <— Let’s do that.

P.S. In my interview with Anders, we chatted about the fact that you can’t sustain that type of focus for more than 4 hours a day. Hence, our prior idea to bake in recovery. He tells us that the best are REALLY good at that.

Our attention is like a muscle.

Lie around on the mental couch while nibbling on click-bait all day long and your attention will get flabby. Go out and hit the mental gym and watch your attention get all ripped up. :)

As Goleman tells us “Concentration on one point of focus is the best attention builder.” We can do this throughout our days. Notice when our mind gets distracted, and bring it back.

Of course, research says that the best way to build that capacity is to meditate. Meditators have actually built up the “muscle” that allows them to focus their attention at will.

Is your mind all ripped up like a body builder or kinda sorta flabby?

Let’s hit the mental gym! :)

Those are the final words of the book.

Where’s your motivational focus? Is it just for you, or for others? For the benefit of the few, or the many? For now, or for the future?