Why "Focus" Is My Word of the Year

I’ve been down this road before. I’ve chosen a word (or words) of the year with the best of intentions. I wonder if choosing a “word of the year” is just a trendier way of making a New Year’s Resolution. Something that rarely makes it past the end of the month. 

But I’m trying again this year, and the word I’ve chosen has a lot more meaning to me. And maybe that’s the difference. My word for 2018 is: Focus.

Deep Work

Late last year, I read Cal Newport’s Deep Work. I’m not even sure how I stumbled across it. I have a “to be read” list that’s a thousand miles long. But I can honestly say that this book deeply (no pun intended) resonated with me. I’ve since been recommending it to everyone.

Newport describes deep work as follows: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skills and are hard to replicate.

When was the last time you created anything in a distraction-free environment?

Newport posits that as we approach a time in the knowledge economy when deep work is necessary, we are faced with a plethora of current trends that discourage it: open office environments, instant messaging, overcrowded email boxes and – worst of all – social media. Because the switch from an industrial economy has been so fast, we haven’t learned how to measure productivity in this new world. 

We fall back on “busyness” because we don’t know what to measure.

One of the reasons this book was so meaningful to me was because I recognized what I was feeling but couldn't put a name to. I’m an introvert; our longer brain pathways are more suited to work that is slow and steady. It’s not to say we can’t act more quickly. My last job as a project manager was built on speed and quantity – and I was very successful at it. But some days I was so busy that I didn’t have time to eat lunch. I was on auto-pilot from the time I arrived until I left, 10 or more hours later. It wasn’t necessarily difficult, but it zapped nearly all my energy.

I realized that was not my ideal environment. I wanted something more suitable to thinking, reflecting, brainstorming and writing – tasks that allowed me long periods of time to focus on just one thing. I’ve been fortunate to create a position for myself that does just that. 

Deep Work has helped me better articulate what I want and what I need to feel successful and fulfilled.

Here are a few ways I’m incorporating “focus” in my day-to-day activities.

Doing more by doing less

It’s tempting to think that once you’re in greater control of your time that you can do anything – in fact, you can do everything! It’s easy to let your brain be more ambitious than reality.

One thing I’m doing is creating fewer goals for myself. I’d rather have a small, focused number of goals that I know I can achieve as opposed to a laundry list of goals that sets me up for failure. Newport also advocates structuring your leisure time, arguing that you can be just as intentional with how you relax as you are with the rest of your day. 

Needless to say, social media is the root of all evil in Newport’s world and he certainly makes some compelling arguments about how it fractures focus and how easily we justify its use. I’m not sure I quite agree with him on this topic; I think some people have become quite adept at using it to further their goals. But social media is something we need to treat with caution. I’m trying only checking social media three times during the workday. It’s a scheduled part of my day so I’m not tempted to overstay – and waste time.

Learning intentionally

The knowledge economy is still a little bit like the wild west. We’re not sure exactly where it’s taking us. But Newport thinks he knows what will make us better able to manage it: those who can quickly master new ideas and produce “at an elite level.”  

If you can take the knowledge you have and turn it into something tangible that people will value, you have a far greater chance of being successful.

Because my schedule is my own, I make sure I have at least an hour a day simply to learn something new. I’ve even scheduled brainstorming time into my day, just to have the time to play with new thoughts to see where they lead me. My learning goals are simple and are structured into my annual strategic plan.

Developing a healthier brain

The neurological arguments for deep work were some of the most interesting to me. One is the concept of “attention residue.” We all know that multi-tasking is bad, but most of us are constantly switching from task to task thoughtlessly. Scientists have argued that when we switch from Task A to Task B, not all of our brain goes with the switch. And the effect is cumulative. Imagine you do five different tasks in an hour. Your brain may be holding on to the residue of four previous tasks while you’re working on the fifth. How likely is it that your full attention is on the issue at hand?

Newport also suggests that we could better manage our attention. And that by doing so, we can improve our lives without making any drastic changes. Do you want to focus on the guy who cut you off on the way home? Or do you want to focus on having two uninterrupted hours to write a report? If you focus on the positive, you can decrease the effect the negative. I suspect this will be even harder than scheduling my social media time, but I’m intrigued by the idea.

Minimizing choices

Have you ever noticed that it’s easier to make a healthy choice for breakfast than it is for lunch or dinner? Will power is a finite thing. We only have so much of it at any given time; use it all up avoiding a three-egg omelet with hash browns and there may not be any left by the time you get to the last meal.

One of Newport’s suggestions to remove friction like this is to schedule your entire day, and it’s something I’ve started doing. For Monday through Friday, I make a schedule the day before that tells me what I’m doing from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. When faced with a never-ending task list, I don’t have to take the time to stop and think about what I “should” do next. It’s already been incorporated into my daily activities. So far, I’ve noticed that the focusing is much easier in the morning; it generally weakens by early afternoon and staying on schedule the rest of the day is more of a challenge.

Newport strongly advises throughout the book that adapting to philosophies and techniques about focusing your time will take … time. 

Your attention is like a muscle; it needs to be regularly exercised to gain strength. 

I highly recommend Deep Work. I’ve barely scratched the surface of what the book covers. Newport shares some truly beautiful examples to illustrate his concepts. And even though I incline toward this way of managing focus, the book generated a lot of new thinking for my eager brain. Everyone can get something out of this book.