Get Your Focus On

Life is distracting.

There are the two-hundred television streaming options.

There are the 51 million YouTube channels. (not hyperbole. I looked it up!)

There are also 75-thousand Substack newsletters.

Emails. Text messages. Social media doomscrolling you perhaps engage in at two in the morning when your cortisol levels don’t let you sleep.

How can we gather all this chatter, rustle it into a pen, and keep the restless herd/horde contained while we focus on our daily goals?

Focus is not the same thing as concentration. Focus is deciding where to put your attention. Concentration is more difficult because it requires sustained focus. All of us have trouble focusing sometimes. For some, this is more clinical. For others, it’s less clinical and more habit. In our hyper-online world, we are becoming more distracted. There’s just so much to absorb.

It’s NOT our fault!

Okay, well, it might not be our fault in that we didn’t create these algorithms and the tech saturated world we are forced to navigate, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have to take responsibility and work on reclaiming our focus.

We can do this. But how? Here are some ideas off the top of my head.

• Go offline more hours every day. This means turning off your phone or putting it in the other room. If you are working on your computer, only open the files on which you are working. If you MUST look up something online, do it quickly and shut the tab down, and whatever you do, do not follow a link trail.

• Only watch TV or YouTube for a specific number of minutes per day and only at certain times during the day/evening. You decide. Stick to it.

• Create a to-do list, not too many items, and check items off as you finish them. So satisfying!

• Meditate. Meditation trains your brain to focus by allowing you to practice pulling your attention back to your mantra or breathing or guide’s voice or sound (chimes, anyone?)

• Review your goals often. Reviewing goals leads to motivation, and motivation leads to focus.

• Reward yourself. Did you choose to deep clean the noxious refrigerator instead of binge-watching a favorite streamer? Did you log into Novlr and meet or surpass your word goal for the day? Reward yourself. I’m not talking ice-cream or chocolate (though these are fabulous and delicious!) so much as giving yourself a mental pat on the back. Sit back and experience the feeling of accomplishment. Tomorrow, remember how good this felt when you have to make that choice again.

• Self-talk. Tell yourself you care more about completing your task and give yourself all the reasons WHY. Why is this task important to you? What’s at stake?

• Make it a habit. Whatever it is you are working on, make it a habit. Habits create less resistance. It’s the difference between zig-zagging around potholes in a back road that hasn’t been maintained for five years and skimming along a smooth highway upgraded with Build Back Better funding. It can be hard to build a habit but well worth it.

• You’ll get stronger with practice.

I’m one who finds it easy to procrastinate & find a million other little things to do than write, but because I have a pretty strong “why” when it comes to my writing, I want to change that. I’m working on building my focus at the same time I’m working to build my muscles. If I want to increase my muscle mass, I need to bring focus to my workout and make working out a priority. If I want to build my book list, I need to bring focus to my work in progress, sitting my butt down at my desk and getting my fingers tap-tapping on the keys.

Sunday, I wrote 4,000 words. Yesterday, 2,000. Today, I’ve got 600 so far. It’s a little harder today. I took some time out to write this blog post.

Darn. I lost focus.

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This essay was first published on my online writing journal Shelley's Journal, on June 10. Click the link to see it there and read others like it. I don't always repub, but this one I thought would be interesting to my fellow writers and to everyone, writers and readers alike, who feel distracted and unfocused. Hang in there. We're all struggling. We can DO this! SRB