Sunday Musings: Focus-The Muscle We’ve Neglected and How to Train It

Happy Sunday Friends!

As always, here is 1 quote I’m musing on this, 2 Ideas, 3 of my favorite things from the week, and 1 question. If you find it useful or interesting, please start a dialogue with some friends or others! I’d love to hear about it.

One Quote I’m Musing: The Power Within

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.”

— Seneca | On the Shortness of Life

Coming into this year, I made a commitment: rekindle my passion for reading. It wasn’t just about books. It was about consuming ideas, expanding perspectives, and keeping my intellectual edge sharp. But as weeks passed, I found myself drifting. A stack of book recommendations sat untouched. Articles I’d saved for later stayed unopened. What was happening?

Sure, I could blame a packed schedule—new roles, mounting responsibilities, and life’s endless demands. But that isn’t the truth. The real issue isn’t a lack of desire or even time. It is focus.

I realized my ability to concentrate—to go deep into a task without succumbing to distractions—had diminished. And I’m not alone. The modern world, with its constant notifications and infinite feeds, is engineered to fracture our attention. For those of us in high-stakes fields like cybersecurity, leadership, or public policy, this isn’t just inconvenient. It’s dangerous.

So, how do we rebuild focus? How do we reclaim the ability to direct our attention and sustain it in a world that’s constantly pulling us in a thousand directions? The answer lies in treating focus like a muscle.

Focus as a Muscle

We know the basics of building strength: train consistently, progressively overload, and rest adequately. Focus works the same way. Without intentional effort, it atrophies. And like muscles, it doesn’t grow overnight. It takes deliberate practice.

But first, let’s confront the challenge. Modern society is designed to hijack our attention. Social media platforms deploy billion-dollar algorithms to keep us scrolling. News cycles are engineered for urgency, pulling us into endless updates. It’s no wonder our collective attention spans are shrinking.

This isn’t just a modern problem. Even the Stoics, centuries ago, wrestled with distraction. Marcus Aurelius battled a 14-year Antonine Plague, the deaths of half of his children, so much so that he wrote in Meditations, “Life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn and after-fame is oblivion”. We can imagine how distraction played out against a man who so needed focus. But he also reminds us that “You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” Today, reclaiming our focus is an exercise in strength using the designed to scatter focus as the resistance. And it begins with training.

Interestingly, we can draw a parallel between human focus and a groundbreaking concept in artificial intelligence. In 2017, Google researchers published a paper titled “Attention Is All You Need,” introducing the Transformer model, revolutionizing AI by showing how attention mechanisms could optimize learning and problem-solving. Just as AI uses weighted attention to prioritize important data and filter out noise, humans must cultivate focus by filtering distractions and honing in on what truly matters. Let’s explore how I think we can do that.

Short-Term and Long-Term Strategies

When it comes to rebuilding focus, it’s important to understand the distinction between short-term and long-term strategies. Think of short-term strategies as the immediate tools in your kit—quick wins that help you reclaim focus in the moment. They’re essential for starting the process, but by themselves, they’re not enough. Without long-term strategies, short-term fixes only treat the symptoms of a weakened attention span.

Long-term strategies, on the other hand, are about creating lasting change. They address the root causes of focus atrophy, building the mental endurance and discipline needed to sustain attention over time. Together, these two approaches form a holistic plan: short-term strategies to get you moving and long-term strategies to ensure the progress sticks.

Let’s start with the quick wins before diving into the deeper work of strengthening our focus muscle.

Short-Term Strategies: Quick Wins for Focus

Building focus starts with small, deliberate actions. Here are three strategies to implement today:

1. Set Clear Objectives

Think about a gym workout. You don’t walk in and say, “I’m going to do the fitness for 30 minutes.” We target specific muscle groups. The same applies to focus. Don’t block off vague “reading time.” Instead, decide: “I’m going to gain a high-level understanding of reinforcement methods in GANs.”

This specificity gives our mind a clear target. It reduces decision fatigue and helps us enter a flow state faster.

2. Eliminate Multitasking

Multitasking is a productivity killer. Every time you switch tasks, your brain pays a “cognitive penalty.” Research shows it can take up to 25 minutes to fully refocus after an interruption. When you’re working, commit to one task. Avoid the temptation to “just check” that email or notification. It’s entirely possible for more than half of a one-hour session to be taken up by resetting to multiple switched tasks.

3. Plan Ahead

Distractions are inevitable, but many are preventable. Before starting a task, ask yourself: What might derail me? Can I put my phone on Do Not Disturb? Should I wear noise-canceling headphones? Even simple tweaks—like do we always have to pee thirty minutes after drinking coffee? Hit the restroom before we start.

Quick Hack: leverage the Zeigarnik Effect. Studies show we’re more likely to remember and complete tasks we’ve already started. Use downtime to do prep work—jotting down notes, opening resources—so when you return, you can dive in more easily.

Long-Term Strategies: Building the Focus Muscle

Quick fixes help, but lasting change requires deeper work. To rebuild focus, we need consistent, deliberate practice—just like strength training.

1. Start Small, Build Gradually

You wouldn’t try to deadlift 600 pounds on your first day at the gym. Similarly, don’t expect to sustain deep focus for hours when we’ve been accustomed to short bursts. Start with manageable increments—15 or 20 minutes of undistracted work—and gradually increase over time.

2. Use Focus Reps

A way I’ve decided on to train focus is through mindfulness exercises, focusing on breath. Here’s how it works:

• Sit quietly and direct your attention to your breathing.
• Inevitably, your mind will wander. You might think about an email you need to send or that meeting tomorrow, piano lessons I need to schedule for my Son, that squirrel over there, mocking me.
• When you notice the distraction, gently bring your attention back to your breath.

Each time you return to your breath, you’ve completed a “rep.” Over time, these mental reps build your capacity for sustained attention. It’s a simple, boring. Thus, provides ample load for the reps.

3. Embrace Discomfort

Growth happens at the edge of your comfort zone. Tasks that are too easy won’t build focus, while tasks that are too hard will lead to stagnant frustration. Aim for a balance: choose tasks that challenge you just enough to keep you engaged but not overwhelmed.

The Stoics remind us that mastery begins in the mind. As Marcus Aurelius advised, “You have to assemble your life yourself—action by action.” Training focus is no different. It’s a series of small, deliberate choices that compound over time.

For our fields, this mindset is invaluable. In an age of constant change and complexity, focus isn’t just a skill. It’s a competitive advantage.

Imagine tackling a cybersecurity threat without the ability to sustain deep focus. Or making a high-stakes policy decision while juggling distractions. The ability to direct your attention—and keep it there—is what separates the good from the exceptional.

Rebuilding focus isn’t easy. It takes effort, patience, and consistency. But the rewards are immense. Start small: pick one strategy from this article and implement it today. Whether it’s setting a clear objective, practicing focus reps, or eliminating multitasking, every step brings you closer to mastering your attention.

Two Ideas From Me

1. Short-term strategies fine-tune your focus for today, but long-term habits pre-train your mind for sustained success.

2. Mindfulness exercises are the human equivalent of zero-shot learning—master the basics, and you can adapt to any distraction.

Three Favorite Things From Others

1. “We try to make virtues out of the faults we have no wish to correct.” | Francois de La Rochefoucauld

2. “If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures; if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures.” | Musonius Rufus

3. Securing the Digital World: Protecting Smart Infrastructures and Digital Industries with AI-Enabled Malware and Intrusion Detection - Academic Paper by Marc Schmitt

Marc explores AI-driven cybersecurity solutions to protect modern infrastructures and digital ecosystems. He evaluates machine learning-based methods for detecting malware and network intrusions, particularly in the contexts of IoT and mobile security. The paper highlights the challenges of integrating AI tools into enterprise systems and offers strategies to address these. It also outlines future research areas to enhance resilience and security in digital industries. | More

A Question for the Week Ahead

What’s one thing in your life right now where improved focus could make the greatest impact?

When you try this out, don’t keep this journey to yourself. Share these strategies with your team, your peers, and your network. Together, we can push back against the forces vying for our attention and reclaim our ability to focus—one rep at a time.

Have a wonderful week,

I’ll see you Sunday.

-e