Focus

A quality that most people lack nowadays since the Hyperstupefaction through social media and their short content took charge. Most unfortunate development of our societies, but that fact alone can create a huge advantage to YOU, my dear reader.

Focus Definition

First and foremost, what in the world is Focus anyway? Focus is a skill that lets you direct all the energy, act and attention towards ONE single thing. It is one of key skills to master to be successful. Its like a mental spotlight. Your brain’s prefrontal cortex filters out noise to shine that light on one task, boosting efficiency and creativity. When distracted, that spotlight scatters, draining your energy and progress.

The Social Media Trap

In the modern world where everything is aimed to distract you from your goals, it has increasingly become very difficult to Focus.

Back in the day, you had your surroundings in the village/ small town/ neighborhood in a big town. There were newspapers, radio, and gossip on the street. Alcohol, tobacco, drugs have been present as well.

All those things distracted back then. And now, you literally have the most efficient and powerful distraction machine ever developed in your own pocket:

Smartphone!

Screen Addiction

According to the study “Screen Time and Addictive Use of Gaming and Social Media in Relation to Health Outcomes” from Frontiers in Psychiatry, there is significant associations between screen time and addictive use, defined as heavy involvement and negative consequences (e.g., neglecting responsibilities). Social media and gaming screen time were linked to higher distraction levels, with gaming showing a stronger association.

Why are Social Media and Games so addictive? The reason is actually very simple. Companies hire Psychologists to find out how they can hook the brain to use the product constantly and the capitalize on it.

As Business Insider already showed in their article, the companies build their apps and software AROUND Psychology manipulation just for you to be hypnotized and make them endless money.

In other words, the technology gave us much good… But also, much evil. Social Media created a perfect Drug in form of rapid Dopamine release. Political news, funny trends, cat videos. All put into a format that drugs your brain to ask for more and more, leaving you with wasted life time and horrific emptiness.

Focus Training

Focus is at all time low. But that’s exactly why people have it easy nowadays to WIN! All it takes is eliminate those things out of your daily life (except when you need it for your job of course…).

You are probably asking yourself “How the hell do I do that?”…

Here is how:

Your Focus Exercise: A Step-by-Step Guide

1. List all things that happen throughout the day. Literally everything.

• wake up
• watch news on smartphone
• feed the cat
• shower
• breakfast, listening to music
• going to work, listening to podcast
• chatting with co-workers
• more social media with a cup of coffee
• and so on

  2. Pick one goal. Be very specific in your choice.

• I want to have a six pack in one month
• I want to build a cat food business within one year
• I want to run a marathon within 3 months of training

  3. Audit all distractions. Take your list and mark everything that you don’t need to achieve your goal and delete it.

• Training for the six pack, yes.
• Take a business course, yes.
• Learn proper jogging technique, yes.
• Watch endless cat videos, NO.
• Eat hamburgers without watching your diet, NO.
• Watch your favorite influencer shake her booty, HELL NO!!!

      4. Add supporting actions/items. Research every topic around your goal and brainstorm actions that you will do every day that support your goal.

Example: Six Pack

• Implement a fat reducing diet
• One mile jog every morning/evening to increase calorie expenditure
• Tracking progress by taking a photo every week

    5. Design your environment. Take a look at your apartment, your working space, your hobby space. Same process here, remove everything that even remotely reminds you of anything else but your goal and add supporting items and actions. The space that you dwell in should scream “MY GOAL”!

Example: Build a business

• Remove your TV, gaming consoles and gaming gear
• Remove all apps that have nothing to do with your future business
• Remove all unnecessary things from your room (flowers, furniture, pictures, etc.)
• Build yourself a proper working space. Desk, PC or Laptop (without games!), mattress. Minimalist approach.
• Take whatever motivates you, be it a poster, Rocky Balboa music, the name of your future business, or even a photoshopped picture of you sitting in a Lamborghini, and cover it all over your working space, your kitchen and ESPECIALLY your bathroom. You need to see what you fight for each and every single second. Its REALLY important for Motivation in difficult times and never lose Focus over your Main Goal!

    6. Practice Daily. Start practicing techniques that Structure your working day. This is extremely important in order to avoid overburdening yourself, which will sooner or later destroy your focus. One of these techniques is the so-called Pomodoro technique. 

The original technique looks like this:

1. Decide on the task to be done.
2. Set the Pomodoro timer (typically for 25 minutes).
3. Work on the task.
4. End work when the timer rings and take a short break (typically 5–10 minutes).
5. Go back to Step 2 and repeat until you complete four Pomodoro.
6. After four Pomodoro are done, take a long break (typically 20 to 30 minutes) instead of a short break. Once the long break is finished, return to step 2.

This technique will also ensure that your distractions are minimized, boosts your motivation and promotes accountability. Very simple, but very effective.

Overcoming Obstacles

Every person lives in some sort of a neighborhood. You are lucky if you have been born into a safe one. But some are not that lucky. Can we actually compare a neighborhood full of well raised and productive citizens and one that is full of criminals and gangs, shooting at each other every day? How can someone concentrate when bullets are flying?

Comparing a person with ADHD? How can I tell such a person that all he needs is an easy exercise?

A person with an eating disorder? Depression? Worse?

What I am trying to tell you here is the fact that everyone of us faces individual challenges every single day and those need to be tackled on an individual level. Either with workarounds, tricks, individual methods, etc. Doing whatever it takes.

That’s it for this article. I hope you found it interesting and will apply the exercise for every goal you have in your life.

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See you in the next article!

PEACE!