Focus like an Eagle

“While the link between attention and excellence remains hidden most of the time, it ripples through almost everything we seek to accomplish.”

Daniel Goleman’s book,?Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, delves deep into the power of focus. “Attention works much like a muscle” he writes, “use it poorly and it can wither; work it well and it grows”.

To achieve success in life, Goleman argues,?we need focus more than knowledge. I abide by it!

Productivity is all rage. We all want to get things done in the least possible time. But, have we given a thought to something basic: How to focus? Like, really how to focus throughout the completion of a project or exercise?

This edition of the newsletter talks about why focusing is more important than knowledge. Learn why the corporate world is volatile and how better focus has become the need of the hour. Lastly, an innocuous attempt has been made to describe ways of enhancing focus and long-lasting productivity.

On Focus Than Knowledge

Just before the pandemic started, I was invited as a speaker in an event. It was a daylong event, and speakers were on the trot. Seeing twinkling lights in the dark, the organizer realized the audience was wandering on mobile phones and laptops. So, he initiated an early break and requested everyone to switch off their devices.?

Onstage action put the audience in the state of?Continuous Partial Focus?— a mental blurriness induced by the overload of the knowledge from speakers. I was surprised, surprised — only to realize, seconds later, that it was the moment of an eye-opening truth.

The onslaught of incoming data degrades focus. A habit quite prevalent in the corporate world as employees lead to sloppy shortcuts, skipping assignments and triaging responses. A wealth of information creates poverty of focus.

To Focus Need of the Hour

In the unpredictable?VUCA?world we live in, you might think about the incongruent state of flux that replaces the certain, stable and familiar human sense.?

What if we change our mindset to turbulent and unpredictable forces of change as crucial ingredients for growth?

VUCA is formidable and the new normal. To survive with what our heart wants in turbulence, we need to steer our productivity by focusing better.?

Improve Focus with Healthy Habits

Practice Mindfulness -?

Drive to one of the yoga workshops organized for corporate clients by my co-founder only to find the most striking atmosphere — participants sitting still, calm and quiet, absorbed in chanting “OM”.

The orderliness of the exercise and the calm focus in the session makes it hard to believe in participants’ individual reasons for stress and burnout. I wondered, “Is the corporate world finally ready for mainstream mindfulness and meditation?

Aetna, a U.S. based healthcare company, reported that since introducing its mindfulness program, it has saved $2000 per employee in healthcare costs and gained $3000 per employee in productivity. Large organizations like, but not limited to Google, Apple, Adobe, and LinkedIn have also embraced mindfulness training to boost bottom-line productivity.?

With “burnout” now officially recognized by the?World Health Organization?(WHO) as Occupational Disease, the responsibility for managing it is now on you.

Digital Detox -

The majority of socialization is occurring through machines that have opened up great opportunities and many concerns.

As excess of anything is bad, the consistent use of digital communication channels is the culprit. Even when we work on one project, the bombardment of notifications from various digital platforms can be exhausting.

Digital detox keeps your gadgets away for specific hours and rejuvenates your mental health with no screen nearby.

Begin Journaling –

“Dear Diary” is not reserved only for high-school students. We can see writing as a pragmatic tool for our daily/weekly/monthly goals to provide clarity to our burnout brain.?

It is even a scientifically proven?fact?that writing your goals every day on paper activates reticular activating system (RAS) that highlights relevant opportunities or tools. It means the more detailed goals you write the better chances of achieving them.

Remember your goal –?

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, after having been ousted in 1984, he found a company that produced Macintosh. His strategy was simple: align Zen with Focus.

We all experienced periods of powerful productivity and then slump times which make us fall behind our desired results. Aligning Zen practice with focus simply helped Jobs with building concentration and realizing when distraction hits. Moreover, it also helped with understanding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.

The best practice is to hold back and keep reminding yourself of your goals. Then only you can align your Zen with focus to boost overall productivity.

Measure your Progress -

By mid-2000s, the Blackberry phones were the most preferred for corporate IT. But the global corporate dominance fast became a consumer fad because the world was changing. With the boom of different mobile devices, Blackberry’s hold on the corporate world evaporated, and they had to compete with all the brands. With no strategy of conquering the changing world, there was no way of answering, Where should we head and how??

“If you think in a systems way,” says Larry Brilliant, “that drives how you deal with values, vision, mission, strategy, goals, tactics, deliverable, evaluation, and the feedback loop that restarts the whole process.” The best leaders have a complete awareness of every step they have made to achieve their goal.?

To sum it up

When we constantly detect the much-required behavioral changes and then reorient our attention to required areas, we become better at our focus game. It comes with the deliberate practice that means practicing with awareness of all the components we want to improve and clear on the exact path of improvement. It makes us pay unwavering focus to each exercise we’re doing at any given moment with measuring progress on whether it is improving or not.

This article was originally published as part of the "Reflections" newsletter. To subscribe, please visit https://rahulgupta.substack.com/

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