Focus For Productivity

Focus is a tool. Focus is also a skill. Interestingly, it also has three distinct, useful results. I'm going to describe and go into some detail on these results and then offer some proven effective exercises and tips.

Focus is a skill that separates the distracting (or unimportant) from what's important. But focus also allows all those unrelated, free floating ideas that are just lying around in your mind, to suddenly connect and make interconnected leaps to genius.

Probably the least consciously used result of this skill is "What you focus on, expands." If you focus consistently on what you want, what you don't want will inevitably fade away.

Focus is a survival skill that has allowed mankind to adapt and overcome. It is the heart of purposeful action. Acting on a task always requires a certain focus and the more focussed you are, the more "in flow" and effective you are during that action.

Consider it the action step of gaining clarity — centering your attention on a particular subject or field of view. Focus is a necessary component of effective action. Focus is inexorably combined with concentration, which is that ability to see only one thing; focus is clarity of purpose, and it automatically brings what's next - in the moment, in the minute, in the day.

The Elimination of Distraction and Mental Fogginess

"I don't know what to do next… I wonder what's on TV? Did I get any email? Let's just check the news this morning before I get started…" says that voice in your head … Ending these thoughts is the most common and most important effect of focus. It is the action of bringing something into focus and concentrating.

Concentration is the action of one pointing - of narrowing your field of attention. This creates a zooming in, a zeroing in aspect of awareness where outside considerations, distractions and influences are discarded. This is intimately tied to focus where you center your attention on a particular interest or activity. Concentration is like a microscope fine focus knob. You use it after you use the coarse focus control.

Getting focused is also the ability to slow your minds bouncing quickness down so that it fully gives priority to — like Curly said — "Just one thing." There will still be many thoughts about that one thing. It's powerful to examine one thing from all the angles and all the "what ifs," but that emphasis brings the full power of everything that your unconscious mind knows or can extrapolate about that thing, to attention. And that is formidable!

Focus enables your subconscious mind to really bring all it's resources to bear on a single item. When you focus on one subject for an extended time, the normal, simple, easy to reach conclusions and insights appear fairly quickly. By then allowing that focus to continue, you let your subconscious mind begin to reach and interconnect seeming disparate ideas and concepts. Therein lies magic!

Focus (and the seemingly unrelated concept of mind play) creates permission for your mind to access dimly connected ideas in new ways that can and do supersede what's already obvious, decided or what has been developed.

What you focus on has no inherent value judgement attached to it. Focus on laziness and it shall be so. Focus on "what's the next logical step?" and thats what you get. You can pay particular attention to the negative or to the positive.

You will receive whatever you focus on. This is playing with the sharpest of swords, that cuts both ways. If you see the lack … or the abundance in everything - that's what you will get.

We can get confused by the fact that our viewpoints are usually pretty large and not that zeroed in. As an example; someone can complain and moan about things and still have a ruthless focus on money… so they are rich and miserable! It's a delicate and intimate balance that each of us can only understand for ourselves.

In this light, focus and what you focus on becomes a survival skill of the highest order. And an enjoyment of life skill that is critical.

This exercise is a template that with a couple weeks daily practice, will enhance and boost your natural ability to center and instantly focus on what's next. Pick a subject that you want to focus on. Useful candidates are aspects that you might feel are lacking in your life — love, abundance, joy, creativity, peace, etc. Take a comfortable position, either sitting with your back straight or laying down. Let yourself relax and allow all tension to just flow out of your body. Pay attention to your breathing and take deep breaths to aid you in relaxing.

If you find that listening to peaceful music or a particular relaxation recording helps you to drop away from your hustlebustle pinball mind, please use those. Some find that imagining a large trunk that you put all your cares and concerns into for the duration of the exercise works well.

Set your intention by stating, "I'm going to focus my mind exclusively on (your chosen subject) for the next 2 minutes."

As guidelines to direct your thoughts as you focus on this one subject, examine:- How would your life change if you were to have more of this in your life?- Imagine ways that you might experience it in your life?- What would you do differently?- What would you feel?

Hold the thoughts and images that come to your mind for as long as you require to feel like you understand and get that idea. You will find that other ideas and thoughts pop in - if they are new angles on the subject - explore them. If they are on different subjects, let them go and bring your attention back to your chosen subject.

Start with a two minute time frame. Once you find that easy, move on to a five minute focus exercise. Practice daily for two weeks and you will begin to notice how much more effective you are. You can experiment with practicing for longer times, or more often during the day.After the two weeks, find a maintenance dose of using this exercise to keep your focus powers honed and sharp.

Steps that can help your ability to focus are shutting email and IM off, or if you are writing - shutting your screen off. One idea that is very effective is to measure your day in terms of productive (or money making) time.

How much could you accomplish if you added just 5 hours a week of stringently focused, effective work time? How about 20 hours?

Say as a start, you want to maximize 1 hour every day where you are focused exclusively on writing that next chapter or article. Pick your most productive time and block it out. Get agreement from the people around you that this is (except for emergencies) an uninterruptible time.

Shut all your browsers off, IM and email off. No news, TV, phone, conversation.Make your screen blank or expand the window and show only the document you are working on. Or if you write by hand, then move to that notebook, clearing all the other clutter off your desk.Set a countdown timer ( like an egg timer) and Go! I find that I work most effectively on the stuff that's not my most favorite… but that has to get done, in five to seven minute stints. I'll set a software timer on the computer to ring at five minutes and then bash away, not allowing any distractions or other actions to interrupt me during that time.

At the end of the time, depending on my state of flow, I'll either immediately reset and go again, or get up, stretch, do some balance practice or 10 pushups. Then I reset and go again! Keep it up until the hour is done.

You can gently expand your "money time" as you get more skilled at maintaining focus.

Focus is worth exploring in terms of it's personal meaning to you - it will yield immense results for you.