The most common habit that people tell me they want to develop is focus.
In today’s world that’s really not surprising as we have so many more things than ever before constantly vying for our attention.
Yet to produce any kind of result, in any area of life, you need to maintain commitment and focus over time. To a great extent this is also a product of today’s far more complicated and complex world, as we find ourselves juggling a large portfolio of projects and commitments.
Life really was a lot simpler in the past. (I know, I used to live there!)
A lot of the time we say that we want to achieve things, and we even say that we’re committed to achieving them, but then we just don’t do what it takes. Sometimes that’s because we’re just not prepared to – we want the result but we’re not willing to exert the necessary effort – and sometimes we actually are willing to make the effort, but we’re unable to keep it up consistently over the required period of time.
Unfortunately, when we find it difficult to sustain the necessary focus, we have a tendency to decide that this makes us a “bad” person, because we “should” be able to maintain our effort and focus. And, of course, having that conversation running in our heads just makes it even more difficult.
But here’s the point: your ability to sustain focus has absolutely nothing to do with being a “good’ or “bad” person, or even “good” or “bad” habits.
We are, quite simply, not evolutionarily programmed to maintain our focus over long periods. In fact, we’re programmed to keep switching attention.
Think about it. When we were hunter gatherers roaming over the plains, maintaining focus on a single subject for a long time was definitely not a good idea.
Imagine yourself as that hunter gatherer, walking through the bush looking for berries. All you’re interested in is berries. Nice big juicy ones. Find them, and all the family will be happy!
So, being a “good” 21st Century person, you’re fully focused on your task. You have your checklist and schedule and you’re out there focused on finding those berries and filling your sack with them.
Now, there are a couple of problems here.
First, by focusing only on berries, you’re going to miss out on all the other food opportunities that are around you. There could be all sorts of other fruit, vegetables and animals around you, but if you’re singularly focussed on berries you just won’t notice them. (This is also true today. By focusing on your task in hand to the exclusion of everything else there are going to be opportunities, and other good stuff, that you completely miss.)
But there is an even bigger problem for the hunter gatherer you.
Remember that evolutionary adaption is mostly about survival. On that basis you might think that focussing on berries is a good thing, because you’ll get food to survive.
The problem though, is that while you’re focussing on berries, that big, hungry carnivorous predator is focussing on you.
While you’re looking for your lunch you’ve just become someone else’s.
So, you can see that switching focus from berries, to threats, to other fruit, to threats, to edible animals, to threats, is actually a really, really, good idea if you want to survive.
Looking at it from today’s point of view, switching attention is still a good idea.
The problems you encounter really arise because you switch attention too often, and too much to things that are either unproductive or worse, counter productive, in relation to what you want to achieve.
Just taking “five minutes” out to look at Facebook would be fine if it was a conscious focus switch choice, and genuinely lasted only five minutes. But the very nature of most of the things that pull your attention away from what you want to achieve is that they are addictive and habit forming, and five minutes so easily becomes half an hour or more.
In Part 2 of this blog we’ll explore how to effectively distribute your focus in order to make sure that you get the results that you really want.