What Is Focus and How Does It Help You?
Episode #1 of the course The fundamentals of mastering your focus by Som Bathla
Welcome to the course!
My name is Som Bathla, and I am the bestselling author of personal development books, including The Mindset Makeover and Living Beyond Self-Doubt.
Over the next ten days, you will learn how to improve your focus and get more things done to accelerate your journey toward your goals.
Today, we will briefly talk about what focus is. You will learn how developing focus will provide you with benefits in multiple ways.
What Is Focus?
“The sun’s energy warms the world. But when you focus it through a magnifying glass, it can start a fire. The focus is so powerful!” —Alan Pariser
The simple meaning of focus is the ability to pay particular attention to and concentrate on any specific object or activity for a long time. From a long-term success perspective, someone has rightly recreated the word “FOCUS” as an acronym:
• Follow
• One
• Course
• Until
• Success
Why Should You Learn How to Focus on Priorities First?
The ability to focus on your priorities is one of your most precious skills, especially in today’s age, where we are constantly targeted by all kinds of messages, like social media, news feeds, advertisements, etc. It seems everyone is after us to steal our attention. Concentrating on one’s goals and priorities takes the backseat as we get drifted by the information overload.
If you can develop your focus and master your attention on the things that matter, you have already secured a cutting edge over other people. Let’s look at a few of the key benefits of building your focus muscle.
Focus reduces stress and anxiety. Stress and anxiety arise from the open loop, which is created by unfinished tasks at hand, as stated by David Allen in his book, Getting Things Done. But focus helps you finish your tasks quickly and effectively, and keeps stress and anxiety at bay. Also, once you are focused on a particular task, you achieve the state of flow and don’t remember the time. You are not thinking and reminiscing your past, nor are you anxious about your future.
Focus gives you feeling of fulfillment. Focus helps you direct your entire concentration on a particular activity. As a result, you’re able to finish the work much faster and feel more fulfilled.
Focus develops your confidence. Focus is the key enabler to completing seemingly difficult and huge tasks. When you maintain your focus, you start getting internal cues to optimally divide the larger work into smaller fractions; that way, you can quickly initiate working on any big tasks. While the distracted mind gets scared from the huge task, a focused mind concentrates and is capable of dividing the task into smaller parts to progress faster. A seemingly overwhelming task now appears as small manageable activities. Therefore, strengthening your focus muscle is an instrument for developing your confidence.
“Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things fail because we lack concentration—the art of concentrating the mind on things to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of everything else?” —John D. Rockefeller
I hope you now understand the significance of mastering your focus. From tomorrow onward, we will discuss specific strategies to master your attention. In the next lesson, we will talk about setting up your daily tasks.
Talk soon.
Som
Recommended books
Getting Things Done by David Allen
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