7 Keys for Deep Focus in an Era of Distraction

This week we’re exploring 7 tactics that you can use to help you direct your attention and energy towards the people / places / pursuits that are the most important to you.

These are the critical factors that, in my experience, make all the difference when you’re trying to make powerful positive changes in your life. Each one will take you some time to think about and implement. Have a read and build them into your life!

“20 years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” - Mark Twain

Deep Focus Key #1: Intrinsic Motivation

Successful people are powerfully motivated intrinsically (within the body and mind). They want to practice because that’s what they love doing. They are not motivated extrinsically by anything outside themselves, such as money or accolades (although these are most welcome should they happen!).

According to both educational and sport psychology research, extrinsic motivation works well in the short term but not so well over time. Intrinsic motivation is a more powerful motivator for people over the long term.

I want you to think about your internal intrinsic motivation. Sometimes things will get tough and you will regress or get off track. But if you’re aware of your “why” – why you are working hard to improve – you will be able to dial in your focus better. This means checking in about your motivations. What is coming from inside you? And what is related more to other people and external cues and expectations? Remember that the external stuff is not much help in the long run. Focus on you!

If you focus on what drives you from the inside, you will find it a lot easier to implement the new skills, knowledge and techniques that will help you achieve your dreams.

Deep Focus Key #2: Control Your Environment

There is a constant discussion in the sport science world about whether genetics or environment (like training practice or your teammates) is more important in determining if someone will become a great athlete or not. Obviously genetics play a huge role, especially for factors like height. But practice and environment are also critical, for example how you work on your technique determines to a large extent how good your sport mechanics are, or how positive your teammates are influences your mental health. So I'm a believer that both are important (so is Dr. Joe Baker ).

But you can only control your environment and your training. You can't control your genetics.

What this means for you is that your personal environment and your training are not small things. You are still flexible, still under construction, and you respond greatly to your surroundings and your habits.

You can empower or dampen your potential depending on your environment. You can improve your various intelligences (including your physical intelligence) through lifestyle decisions. And you get to decide who you want to be by creating the conditions around you.

Deep Focus Key #3: Create Rituals

Elite athletes develop pre-game rituals to enhance their performance by creating a sense of consistency and control. These rituals, ranging from specific warm-ups to mental visualization, help athletes enter a state of peak mental and physical readiness. They provide a psychological edge by instilling confidence and reducing anxiety, allowing athletes to focus deeply and perform under pressure. Such routines harness the power of habit and familiarity, enabling athletes to center themselves amidst the chaos of competition and access their highest capabilities.

Practicing healthy rituals, particularly in the context of focus and priority management, significantly enhances performance and wellbeing. Establishing a routine, such as a consistent morning ritual, sets a calm and prepared tone for the day, reducing stress and improving the ability to handle unexpected challenges.

Improving focus through rituals that designate specific times for concentrated work, avoiding multitasking, boosts cognitive performance. By dedicating set periods to focused tasks without distractions, the quality and efficiency of your work output will be notably enhanced.

Deep Focus Key #4: Protect yourself from Decision Fatigue

Knowing how to avoid the pitfalls of mental and emotional life can be as important as knowing how to get into good habits and techniques. And that’s exactly the case with a phenomenon called Decision Fatigue, which occurs when you run out of the mental energy required to make decisions that will get you to your dream.

Every one of us has a limited amount of mental energy. As we make our way through a day of hard choices, we start to run down because our energy decreases every time we have to make a decision: “Am I going to sit down and get this project done?” “Am I going to the gym?” “Am I going to eat that treat?” Choices take energy.

Decision Fatigue is a problem because when you have burned through your mental toughness for the day, your habits take over and you become a slave to whatever you do normally. If your habits aren’t ideal, your food, sleep and exercise can derail in a hurry and take your ability to think clearly with them.

The key to avoiding decision fatigue is to have a plan in place for when you will be at risk for doing things that go against your dreams, goals and objectives. Develop your plan to help you prevent decision fatigue. What is it that you are looking to accomplish? Where do you have difficulties in staying consistent with your objectives? What can you do - ahead of time - to avoid problems that crop up?

Answer those questions and you're well on your way to success.

Deep Focus Key #5: Use Media to Your Advantage

When I was training for Ironman, I needed to exercise a lot early in the morning before my family woke up. Some mornings were tough: getting out of a warm bed to go outside in February for a winter run is not exactly fun. But one thing that helped me was a YouTube clip of the NBC Ironman show. It was motivating, exciting and got me out of the house on many mornings when I did not want to get up and train.

Scientists and psychologists refer to this as “The Media Psychology Effect.” Simply put, this area of research explores how pictures, graphics, sounds, and what you read impacts your psychology. These effects can be very good and very bad. If we focus on the good side of the media effect, we can take advantage of the fact that our brains change based on what we are exposed to. New neural connections are made that help us to think better, solve problems better, concentrate better and learn better, depending on what we watch, consume and do.

Consider the media you consume and its effect on you. What magazines do you subscribe to? What TV shows do you watch? What blogs do you read? What podcasts do you listen to? Every one of these choices will influence your health and performance. Make sure that the only media that makes it to your brain is positive and constructive and helps you be better.

Deep Focus Key #6: Plan to Rest

The prevailing mindset in high performance training in the 70s, 80s, and 90s was for athletes to do as much training as possible, as hard as possible, for as long as possible. The survivors would end up champions and everyone else was training fodder.

Where this approach failed was that it led athletes to consistently train at about 75-85% of their capacity. There is no way to hit 100% or real race-pace in practice if you are always pushing. You just can’t sustain or attain that level of performance. As a result, many athletes never truly prepared their bodies and minds for competition-level performance.

Then, in the early 2000s, a new training philosophy emerged that was based on creating world-class performances as often as possible. The key focus was on training intensely (85-100% of capacity) followed by a period of training at 50-60% of capacity to ensure proper rest and recovery. The result has been better, faster performances and, interestingly, healthier and happier athletes.

Similarly, techniques like Work Cycling and single tasking are designed to ensure that you optimize your performance. Go hard – at peak capacity – when you need to and take it easy when you can. And always make sure you mix it up. That’s the key to a consistent world-class performance.

I try to set up my day like this: a 90-minute block of intense work followed by 15 minutes of movement and a 15-minute break to re-energize and eat something healthy. Repeat. This gives me 4 or 5 blocks of great work over 8-10 hours. I finish the day with enough energy to go home and play with my kids for a while before we settle down for the night, and I haven’t been grinding through a sugar and caffeine haze that has left me tired and unproductive.

Deep Focus Key #7: Be Mindful

Try the age-old practice of being mindful by focusing your awareness of what is happening in and around you. Merely register the data from your senses or thoughts in your mind with detachment and objectivity, as pure facts – watching and observing without labelling, judging, interpreting or analyzing.

Take a few minutes to do nothing but collect data through your senses. What are you touching and how does it feel (cold, warm, hot, smooth, rough, soft, hard)? What can you see in terms of shape, colour, texture, distance, closeness? What sounds are close by and further away and can you identify them all? What smells are in the air (your cologne, a cup of coffee, someone’s lunch)? What taste do you have in your mouth (sweet, sour, metallic, bitter)? Practice for a few moments each day and you will develop your ability to stay present, develop focus, connect to your body and stay in your flow state.

This technique involves being 100% present in the moment with all our attention directed at one thing only. I can do this when I listen to a great piece of music. I also love art galleries, because when faced with a masterpiece, you really can’t think about anything else. You can also do this in a conversation with a friend or family member and be absolutely focused on what they’re saying without your mind wandering or worrying about what you’re going to say back. Just listen and try to understand.

Sharpening your focus and living in the moment are great ways to dissipate stress. So much of our stress comes from thinking about the past or the future. When we stay in the present, we often realize that things are pretty good.

Final Thoughts

Focusing deeply in an era of constant unrelenting distraction is one of the grand challenges of our time. When we build and implement practices that elevate our health and wellbeing by thinking clearly we can unlock our true potential.

Try one or more of these ideas and let me know how they work for you!