Focus

What is Focus and what does really help you achieving it?

Definition of focus:

If we look at it from an analytical perspective, we can look at the definition by cambridge:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/focus

Cambridge dictionary defines focus as “the main or central point of something, especially of attention or interest”.

So you see, there are two essentials: attention and interest. At least one of them has need to be involved to create any form of focus.
Attentiveness is a certain amount of alertness(sharpness and basic interest/fundamental interest.
Interest is the motivation to give your attention to a specific topic.

As you see: the definitions are running around in circles.
But it is all about centering the mind on a task or topic.

 

The Common View:

When people say somebody is focused or somebody has a high ability to focus, they usually mean one of the following two things:

  1. You should better not interrupt the focused person, because he/she is working or

  2.  you will not be able to interrupt the focused person easily from pursuing their goal, cause he/she has a high potential to center the mind on one topic.

The Origin of focus:

Some think the ability to focus is inherited, but I believe the choice is yours.

ADHD kids, who are often blamed to be focusless by nature, can have focus on certain things as well as others, it just needs to be of a very high valued interest for them. Not going into too much detail about ADHD here.

But the choice is always yours.

 You have to decide, that something is of a great interest to you. As long as you keep this decision, you will be focused easily, and you don’t even realize that you are focused on something, forgetting the time and feeling totally in control of the task at hand.

If you are not very interested in something, there might be certain circumstances that force you to keep focus on something. These facts can be due to the circumstances of life (keeping a job, paying for an apartment) or a higher goal (having a healthy relationship). Then focusing sometimes seems like fighting an uphill battle, the longer you focus, the harder it gets. Fortunately there are ways to defuse this situation.  It is getting trained to will your way through things. Sounds hard, but it is like I mentioned before: it gets easier with every take you get. This method can help for short periods, but it is in no way sustaining. The will to keep a forced focus is an energy source that gets depleted easily and needs a long time to refill.

Activation Of Focus:

Some people believe that you can actively switch on focus.

 I believe in that, too. It is all about a general mindset you can sign in to. You just have to make the decision to be curious or explorative. And the topic that needs to be focused on is your next research area.

Curiosity and the will to explore new topics are basic for every really high focused person. Everything new can trigger the focus for those guys. Even considered neutral “boring” subjects. If you adapt this point of view you will see, that every time you meet a topic to focus on, it gets easier.

Btw: making decisions can be trained by repeating the process of consciously deciding- but later to that point.

So now let’s have a look at the two sides of the same coin named focus:

First the bright and shimmering side:

Flow as non-draining focus

Flow is a term coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. His last name is really hard to pronounce, and that is after his definition of Flow the second thing he is known for in psychology. The concept of flow is simple. Csikszentmihalyi describes eight characteristics of flow:

  1. Complete concentration on the task
  2. Clarity of goals and reward in mind and immediate feedback
  3. Transformation of time (speeding up or slowing down)
  4. The experience is intrinsically rewarding
  5. Effortlessness and ease
  6. There exists a balance between challenge and skills
  7. Actions and awareness are merged, losing self-conscious rumination
  8. There is a feeling of control over the task.

Everybody has had at least one moment where all of those conditions were happening. The “in the moment” experience.

Getting into and then being in the Flow can be very addictive. One of the reasons why video games have been on a constant rise- the flow is a low hanging fruit while playing your favorite game. But work can be very rewarding, too, if it meets many criteria mentioned above.

How do you achieve the flow?

To reach the state of flow, we need

 a task,

 special surroundings and

 an approved state of mind

to meet as many conditions of the above-mentioned as possible:

  1. Nothing disturbing around you. Even music can interrupt the feeling of flow, although some people say they can’t reach the state without it. More often than not, they need to focus on achieving inner stillness as the music tends to shut that down. But inner stillness could bear some dangerous impact, ugh?
  2. The task and goal have to be clearly defined beforehand. Be kind to yourself and take some minutes to define what you really want. What is your topic? What are the basic properties? What must be factually included? And then: Which status are you aiming at: An exploration? Giving a draft? Producing something at an intermediate state? Doing really nice stuff? Building something special, something close to perfect?
  3. The feedback loop aka. receiving a result. Do it as quick as possible based on your decisions on your goal. Either you measure every action or you have a trainer beside you, who gives you neutral feedback on the execution.
  4. You can speed down the time by aware breathing, but you can’t speed it up. There is no influence of faster breathing on the sense of time. But no matter what you will see, that in the process of getting into the flow, your sense of time will develop by nature. And if you are afraid of losing timely in your topic or you have to meet some appointments make sure you put a reminder before diving into it. Keep your subconscious clean from other topics like keeping track of the time.
  5. Carrying out the matter itself has to be something you personally care about, something that suits to your character, convictions or passions. Or it needs to be connected to something you care about- that might be a person or a place as well as an honoring of your work.
  6. The more you get used to certain tasks by exercising, the easier they become. And the less you need additional effort to execute the task with precision. Like this you will rise your skill-level intrinsic.
  7. The task should not be too easy as it would get boring, but it should not be too hard either as it gets too demanding then. Finding the sweet spot can be hard and most often it results in people taking stretch goals for certain tasks. Don’t do that. Take an 85% to the max task (MaxTask = the best possible outcome of a task).The task you face should thrill you by its complexity but not overtax you. If you feel bored or overtaxed you should rethink your goals. If bored, set your goals higher. If overtaxed, think about the 85% line and what you have to learn first to achieve your goal more easily. You will have to exercise setting goals that thrill you just at the right level.
  8. When you realize you are judging yourself, take a brief moment to refocus on the given task. Start feeling the execution of the task and your involvement in it. Don’t look at the outcome at this moment. Judging is always a process, that involves the view of others on your task. As this isn’t important for your goals, you don’t have to care about it. If you don’t have to care- just skip it. How to recognize a judgement or hidden judgement is a different topic.
  9. A feeling of control over a task can only be achieved by repeating actions or rethink patterns over and over again. Try and error. As the process progresses, you can have everything under control up to a certain degree. And with every try the possibility of new errors gets less. And you gain control. If you believe at the beginning of a new task, that you have everything under control, you are trapped (Dunning-Kruger-Effect is a nice thing). But the degree of controlling a task increases with every failure.

It is easy to tweak one or two characteristics to achieve a good foundation/basis for generating flow in hobbies and things that bring fun naturally to you. Other perhaps not self-chosen topics will much harder to be catched.

But I’m not only talking about getting from good to best with complicated topics. Even mundane tasks or work can get improved upon using the principles mentioned above.

To summarize, you can see two basic aspects to deal with: action and mindset.

The design of actions resulting from the written above can be derived pretty easily:

  • You set a threshold of quality/result in a task.
  • When you fulfill it, you receive a reward – because you reached the defined goal.
  • Then reward yourself for doing the task- not only for the result.

Two rewards for achieving one goal sounds fine for everybody.

 And there you go with a feedback loop, a clearly defined goal and an appropriate difficulty level.

The mindset and feeling during the actions is more difficult to achieve because of different reasons:

  1. We can’t force feelings/emotions.
  2. We all tend to judge during a process of doing something
  3. We are used to concentrate more on opportunities than on the process of doing so we are more concerned about non-task-topics than on the task.
  4. We tend to focus on possible failure, which keeps us from defining the right level for a task. Or
  5. We tend to define stretch goals because of our missing experience in defining step-by-step-goals.

But:

In every situation you have the chance to evaluate your emotions. When you are in a positive mood, you can learn, what is triggering you positively- so take your time to reflect.  And when you are in a bad mood, you can learn about your triggers as well- take your time to reflect. 

Just lean back and recap the situation, that caused your emotion. When was the point, where everything went wrong or right. What was happening in that situation? What got in your mind? Knowing your triggers will empower you to direct your emotions more easily.

How to deal with triggers will be a different topic.

You have the opportunity to give yourself time. A positive mindset takes time to develop. A lot of people never worked consciously on their way of thinking and will never do. Every habit that took such a lot of time to form is at first hard to change.  But getting into a playful mood can help with shifting your mindset towards creating a flow beneficial environment.

Now back to our focus-coin- you remember? Everything has two sides.

Here the dark shining side:

Concentration

Concentration as draining focus

Concentration is the consciously maintained act of centering the mind on a given topic. And here we are talking about concentration without effortlessness- different from that concentration you have when you are in flow. This type of concentration takes resources. Typical examples are parts of your everyday work, learning something on a high degree in a subject that you will never need in your life again (hint: there is no such thing as general concepts can be applied anywhere) or listening attentively to a person you care about, but right at this moment not being interested in the topic on hand he/she is talking about.

In psychology you find the term of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a negative feeling that occurs when you are doing something that you do not want to do or when you want to do something that you are not able to do or capable of. Cognitive dissonance accumulates until you can’t handle it anymore and you break down or until your control over your behavior diminishes and you fall off the topic. Cognitive dissonance builds up exponentially. That’s why at a certain point “you can’t take it no more”.

To reduce cognitive dissonance in cases you personally value very highly, it helps to mindfully relax and use the so released amount of effort that is necessary to perform the task as good as necessary and possible, if considered neutral.

In general, it helps to have an overarching goal that pulls you. It can be something like: “I want to get this degree to get the job of my dreams and therefore I need to pass this exam.” Or “I want to have a healthy body to decrease my anxiety of being rejected.”

 As long as you now work smart, the gruelsome tasks you have to concentrate on get easier.

The problem with higher overarching goals is that there is no instant gratification. The degree takes a long time to achieve, getting a healthy body takes months to build. Therefor it is important to build a compelling picture with as many positive details as possible to pull you towards that goal.  And it is necessary to define several lower steps of success. If these steps are set-up wisely, you get the needed gratification while working on the major goal.

This leads to the effect, that “forced” concentration becomes easier. It still sucks, but is less hard as you have a purpose for why you are struggling.

After each session and every partial step you should reward yourself. Like this you to teach yourself that concentration is a positive thing. Give the struggle a positive connotation. 

Following this method some time, you will realize that it becomes easier to concentrate for shorter number of times. But don’t believe from one session to the other you will miraculously be able to concentrate twice as long.

Everything that lasts takes time, and everything that doesn’t take time, won’t last.