I bet most Indians have heard this story. But it doesn’t hurt to tell it once again as it perfectly emphasizes the importance of focus.
Five brothers, called Pandavas, were learning archery from their teacher Guru Dronacharya. Their target was an eye of a toy sparrow on the tree at some distance.
The first brother came in to try. Dronacharya asked him before he was allowed to shoot the arrow, “What do you see?” He replied, “I can see the sparrow, branches, fruits, and leaves.”
Dronacharya signaled him to proceed to shoot and . . . . OOPS! He missed the eye by a mile.
The next three brothers had similar replies to the question and their fate in the task was also the same – None were able to hit the target.
Now came the fifth. Once again Dronacharya asked “What do you see?” to which he replied, “I see nothing but the eye of the sparrow.“
And guess what? He hits the bull’s eye (or . . . . sparrow’s eye?). His name was Arjuna.
See how unmoving focus and concentration can bring you remarkable results?
Coming back to the modern world, we now face more serious challenges to achieve it. And that is why the ability to focus is getting more and more valuable. But once achieved, it will move you ahead in the line.
The first step to solving a problem is to know the problem. So let me introduce you to the three enemies standing between you and unmoving focus.
Understanding the enemies of focus
Enemy #1. Excess of accessibility
You live in a highly connected world where you can reach out, talk and influence people around the globe while sitting at your desk.
Take this blog article as an example which I am writing from my home in India. But who knows if a guy from Uganda might find this article and get influenced.
No doubt, this connectedness has a lot of positives. But its negatives are often ignored. And this ignorance is what damages your ability to focus. Unless you deliberately take action against it, you will be at the mercy of others.
Professor Cal Newport gave a nice example of the ignorance of the negative side of connectedness in his best-selling book Deep Work.
Facebook built the world’s largest open floor plan for its headquarters. In layman’s terms, Facebook designed a building that encouraged employees to stumble upon each other to exchange information and collaborate.
“But they did so at the cost of massive distraction” criticizes Cal, quoting the experiments conducted for the British TV Special “The List Of Office Buildings”.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if the largest social networking site in the world doesn’t support its employees to socialize?
The point I am trying to make is that the more accessible you are, the poorer your focus will be.
Is your phone on? Great, anyone having your phone number can interrupt you. Are you working in your living room (or at Facebook Headquarters)? You will be seeing a lot of traffic.
Enemy #2. Lack of discipline
Even if you are out of reach of the outside world, you still need to fight the urge to deviate from your task and keep yourself away from succumbing to your temptations. Otherwise, you will be out of focus and move away from what matters.
Let’s say you are studying at your desk in a quiet room. You may be motivated at the start, committed to studying like never before. But soon you may find yourself drowned in boredom and couldn’t help but grab your phone.
The problem is that you may have made yourself inaccessible, but the outside world is accessible to you. They may not be able to reach you, but you can reach them.
“Let me just have a quick look at Instagram”, “I will watch just one episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and then continue”. This possibility is where our second enemy lies and it demands the discipline to encounter it.
Enemy #3. Poor elimination and prioritization
Unlike Arjuna, in the modern world, you are often provided with multiple targets which causes you to lose focus. The good news is that you are not supposed to hit each one of them. Just hitting a few targets will do the job equally well or even better.
Many of us are unaware of what we want to do. And when you don’t know what’s important, everything seems important.
If you take a hard look at stuff with a tag of “important” in your life, you will find that the majority of them can be eliminated without any significant effect on the overall outcome, given that you know what you want.
And the remaining targets just need to be prioritized and eliminated one by one.
For example, a person who wants to start a business may perform these tasks each day: –
- Check emails
- Meet friends
- Watch Television
- Social media
- Job
- Side hustle
But if you analyze, only side hustle contributes to the goal of starting a business. And taking the job as a necessity to pay the bills, the first four activities can be eliminated completely or partially.
A simple and easy way to improve your focus
After being introduced to the three enemies of focus, it is evident that you are supposed to do exactly the opposite of it to turn these foes into friends. That means you need to: –
- Lower your accessibility
- Have more discipline
- Make ruthless elimination and proper prioritization
It doesn’t take an IQ of Stephen Hawking to observe that running a marathon needs training and practice while average sprints can be done by almost anybody (Remember that I told average sprints, not like Usain Bolt). But why am I telling you this?
Because focusing for extended lengths is similar to running a marathon – it’s achievable but needs practice. But focusing for short periods, which is like average sprints, can be done by anybody without first having to achieve nirvana.
So why not use this insight to turn this game of focusing on our side? What do I mean exactly?
Instead of overwhelming yourself by trying to focus for a long period and ultimately giving up to temptations, it is much better to focus for a short period followed by a short break and repeating the cycle.
This technique is called Pomodoro Technique.
Suppose your task is to concentrate on your work for 25 minutes and then take a refreshing break of 5 minutes. How does it feel as compared to a marathon of 2 hours? I bet the first one is much more achievable.
This approach also turns the first two enemies of focus into your allies. How?
1. Accessibility: – If you are unavailable to the outside world for 25 minutes for the sake of focusing on your task, will anybody mind it? Of course not.
2. Discipline: – If the outside world is unavailable to you for 25 minutes so that you can focus on your task, will you find it hard to practice discipline? It shouldn’t.
The third enemy of focus is also simple to eliminate. Be clear about what you want to do and use that as a guiding light to eliminate and prioritize tasks.
There is one more thing you need to keep in mind. What you do during your break also determines the quality of your focus for the next 25 minutes. Remember I suggested taking a refreshing break and not an energy-sucking one? Keeping that in mind you can: –
- Listen to music
- Take a walk
- Meditate
- Grab a coffee
- Read short pieces of knowledge like the one you are already reading
- Talk face-to-face with someone
Conclusion
It is practically impossible to have a focus as weak as a castle of sand on one day and a laser-like focus on the next day. But you can begin working towards that today by starting with as small as 25 minutes and working your way up to focus for a longer time.
Having known the method, now the only thing between you and focus is deliberate practice. Most likely you are going to see only a small improvement in the beginning but as you keep practicing, you are going to get better at it and will be able to run the focus marathons.
Quick Question – Which useless stuff will you eliminate from your life to focus better?
Let’s Connect Beyond
Hey buddy, I hope you found this post valuable. But Make in Yourself isn’t limited to this blog. It goes beyond this where I provide you with bite-sized digestible insights so that you can grow on the go.
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