The Secret of Excellence, Part 2: Focus!

Before I go any further, let me clarify: I am not talking about Prioritisation! Setting priorities is about doing the right things, or at least the most important or most impactful things. Focus is about how we do what we do, not what we do.

My lightbulb moment with regards to focus came when I studied the Prelude op. 32 no. 13 by Rachmaninov. This is essentially a piano concerto without an orchestra, quite long, very complex. And I found I was unable to play through the last two pages of it. Although I thought I had the piece perfectly memorized and very well rehearsed, every time I tried to perform it, I would make mistakes and forget my lines during these final two pages. And no amout of practice would improve the situation.

My teacher smiled and asked me to play these two pages really slowly. Well, that should be easy, right? Slower means more time and reduced stress, right? I tried with half the original tempo - and made the same mistakes. I tried even slower, and the slower I got, the more mistakes I made. My teacher smiled again and asked me to find a tempo that was slow enough so I could play without making any mistakes. More importantly, the task was to be able to do everything, every little detail, with full conciousness, without the slightest hesitation, without any moment of unawareness of what needs to happen next.

This task of achieving full conciousness turned out to be the key factor, and it is applicable to anything we do - although, of course, the technique of slow motion does not work physically e.g. for dancers or many instruments other than the piano (in which case we need to resort to practicing in our mind, which works equally well).

One thing that happens when we slow down is that automations break down. Our brain is wired to package and automate things we do repeatedly, so e.g. when we learn to drive, the many things we need to do at the same time that overwhelm us in the beginning happen more and more subconciously, freeing up mental capacity for other things. But in slow motion, our brain stops executing automated routines.

And that leads to the next thing that happens: we start to realize just how many things we are actually doing. Every little detail becomes a concious task. This will at first be too much to process, but if we slow down even more, we are capable of reaching a state where we are conciously performing every single detail flawlessly and without the slightest insecurity or hesitation.

At that point, a third and most important thing happens: our mind becomes fully and exclusively focused on performing the task at hand. The intensity of our focus increases to a level where no other thoughts and no outside influences are able to invade our conciousness.

But the real magic happens when we find this level of focus and practice just a few times without ever loosing it: we realize that our mind is capable of maintaining this level of focus and conciousness at any speed. Practicing in slow motion is just a method to learn how to reach this state.

With my Prelude, I eventually arrived at a tempo that was no more than 2% of the original. That tempo allowed me to focus 100% of my attention on playing the piece. I was able to play the two pages perfectly, three times in a row. By the forth time, I found that I was able to maintain that same level of focus while playing almost at the original tempo. And very soon I was able to play the two pages perfectly, at performance tempo, with full focus.

There are a two lessons here that I since try to apply in my business life as well. The first would be to remain concious of every detail of what I am doing. Whether I am in an internal meeting, with a customer, or on stage at a public event: everything we do has an impact on the people we interact with. Being concious of everything we actually do greatly increases our ability to influence the outcome of any interaction. How we sit or stand, our body language, all these small movements we make, where we look, how we modulate our voice, the exact language we are using, all of this can make a difference, and if we do all of this conciously we have a much greater and more positive impact.

The second lesson is: focus on what you do in any given moment, and on nothing else. There is no benefit to worrying about the next thing you need to do, or be distracted by anything that happens simultaneously. Of course that does not mean to ignore the people you interact with: these people are a core part of what you are doing. But the smell of coffee in the room, the doorbell in your home office, the smartphone displaying a notification, are all not part of that task. If any of this invades our conciousness then we are not truly focused. And if we aren't, there is no way we can be at our absolute best!