The Five Pillars of a Focus Practice
By utilizing a focus practice, it’s possible to totally change the way you work, how impactful that work is, and how good you feel while doing it. If you’re reading this, chances are you fit the following profile: You’re motivated. You believe in self-betterment as a constant process. You have an intuitive sense that work shouldn’t be this chaotic.
Focus > Productivity
Productivity is out, and focus is in
- The key to replacing our attachment to productivity with a focus practice is to recognize that we are trying to cure the illness with the poison
- We live in a cluttered, disjointed, frustrating work culture because of the fact that we have grown more and more reactive, and more addicted to putting out fires and pursuing dopamine bursts rather than getting real work done
True Prioritization Begins With Elimination
Focus isn’t just what we focus on, but everything we don’t focus on.
- The first step in applying a prioritization method is to build the muscle of anti-prioritization – eliminating what isn’t a priority before focusing on what is.
Your headspace mirrors your digital workspace
Stop presuming that the sprawling ecosystem of information is a necessity for your work and accept that selectively filtering – rather than rejecting – this ecosystem will be the future of knowledge work.
- Take back our focus
- We need to align our attention with our intention
Use your cognitive calories wisely
Studies show that we need to stop thinking of time as our only limitation.
- If we want to optimize focus, we should make an intentional and effective use of cognitive calories the primary goal and then structure time around that
- The first step to implementing this is to learn our limits, and then to work with them rather than against them
The Takeaway
Focus is our most precious asset, it’s the key determinant of quality knowledge work, and it’s under attack.
- One of the best investments you can make in yourself is to begin building a focus practice today. It may well make the difference between a career riddled with distractions, frustrations, and stress and a career that is fulfilling, balanced, and impactful.
Self-awareness leads to better habits
One of the core elements of building a focus practice is to know, and trust yourself
- Focusing deeply on something requires the confidence and self-assuredness to put that piece of work first and foremost, and consequently shut everything else out
- This requires you to believe that your work is the most important thing you could be doing, and that no panicked Slack ping or email from a colleague or boss contains a more relevant use of your attention