How many times do you check your phone between 6am to 9am?
Find out this number just one time and see what number you got and what this number is all about to you.
This number tells us something about our life and our current mindset.
This is also a simple research to reflect our own habits of how our life is rolling everyday.
The study of our own life is one of the best ways to learn about human progress and experience.
Simply, this number tells us what exactly the focus is.
Is it derailed or dissipated or conserved?
Unlearning old and obsolete ideas or undoing harmful habits is more painful than installing new good habits on us.
We absolutely need deliberate focus to unlearn the old and to install the new good habits.
Focus shouldn’t be used as a noun, it’s always a verb in our lives. Richard Rohr, the author of ‘Falling Upward‘ states, “Transformation is often more about unlearning than learning,” that highligh the need to challenge our existing mindsets.
“If we don’t see anything or if it is far from our reach, we become more focussed in our task at hand, the influence of the unseen thing decreases dramatically.”
One day my daughter was doing elementary math: fractions and decimals.
I was trying to help her.
Her laptop was next to her, turned off and inside the case.
I was observing her when she was doing math problems. She was partially focussed in math but not fully engaged in the problems at hand.
She was doing math but occasionally wandering and watching her laptop.
Our mind is very clever because it knows what’s around us.
It tricks us a lot if we become fool and easily accepts its signal.
I told her, “Bunu, I think it’s better if you make a habit of keeping your laptop somewhere on the shelf or in a drawer secure.”
She replied, “Why?”
I said, “It would be safer, you know your younger brother’s habit, he is two years curious toddler, he can ruin things faster”
She added, “Sure, and she put her laptop inside the drawer.”
I again added, “I prefer another room than here.”
She told me, “It doesn’t matter.”
But I requested her, “It matters, you will understand it later.”
“If you don’t see anything from your eyes, your mind also doesn’t see it, if you don’t see your laptop, your mind works pretty smoothly on your math problems.
“Trust me you will realize the benefit of it later,” I added.
I didn’t want to go deeper than this with my twelve years old daughter.
The essence is if we don’t see anything or if it is far from our reach, we become more focussed in our task at hand, the influence of the unseen thing decreases dramatically.
Research has shown us again and again, it works fantastic to increase our focus on the task at hand.
My daughter spent in solving math problems almost forty minutes uninterrupted.
“Building the habit of focus is the same as other habit formation because kicking any habit seemed to be contagious.”
Many times, it is easy to ignore temptations when they’re far and not immediately available.
But when they are right in front of us we lose perspective and forget our distant goals.
Our human judgement is so distorted by the immediate temptations that we forget long term benefits.
It ruins our future aspirations.
This is normal and natural. C.S. Lewis, the author of ‘The Screwtape Letters‘ said, “Human judgment is swayed by immediate temptation away from long-term good by focusing on short-term pleasures over eternal concerns.”
Reward is one way to start the habit of focus for us, but by no means it’s the end solution.
I sometimes offer myself a reward: If I finish the task I will give me a reward, if I want now one day trip but after three month a weekend trip, it’s my choice.
My mind always says one day trip right now.
Alas, instant gratification.
See the power of it even though the reward becomes double after three month.
One additional point, though it’s debatable but cash reward is good for kids because it teaches them about autonomy, and not only that it also teaches them how to handle cash with responsibility.
Instant gratification is not unusual, it is made by mind so that they can be changed only by practice.
Instant gratification derails focus, patience, and flow. Alan Watts, writer and the author of ‘The Book‘ emphasizes that instant gratification is driven by the brain’s dopamine system, it feels natural, but mastering the ability to delay it builds character, freedom, and long-term success.
We can build focus to beat instant gratification no matter who we are or where we come from because we are born with it.
Building the habit of focus is also the same as other habits.
Kicking any habit seemed to be contagious.
If one person in our family quit smoking or alcohol, the chance of another person quitting would increase dramatically.
The chance also becomes better if a neighbor, best friend, or coworker quit.
For example, reading a physical book and checking notifications on our smartphone at same time aren’t healthy and progressive.
“High achievers not only practice focus by reading books but also gain knowledge, especially by compounding the context of knowledge effect, and invest on it.”
If we increase our focus rather than our working time, it would be a lot productive.
Focused work produces real challenging results on time but routine work produces only default results.
Focus habit quadruples the results overtime.
We have to teach our kids what focused work is and what just work is, show them the difference by our own activity.
Focused person says, “ I’m smart enough to figure out what my situation is telling me, I’m writing a project report.”
But a working person says, “I’m smarter than my situation so that I’m writing a project report and checking emails.”
Few weeks ago, I told my family I will take them hiking the following weekend.
For some reason I couldn’t take them hiking on that weekend and I went to work.
But during work, I experienced that my mind was wandering for hiking.
My kids’ minds were more devastated than mine.
To be honest, I was at work but my mind was hiking constantly up and down.
The reality is if we are hiking, then our mind should be hiking and if we are at work then our mind should be at work.
This is only possible if we’ve practiced a focused mind spirit.
Life requires a lot of work but a lot of work requires a small monomaniacal focus. Robin Sharma, productivity thinker and author of ‘The Everyday Hero Manifesto‘ always advocates for a a small monomaniacal focus on the few things that count stressing that productivity means cutting distractions and being a purist, not a generalist.
Focus can be built by repeated rigorous mental practices.
There is a reason why Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett read a physical book a few hours everyday in a distraction-free environment.
They not only practice focus by reading books but also gain knowledge, especially by compounding the context of knowledge effect and invest on it.
“Extrinsic motivation of reward flows towards intrinsic motivation for accomplishment of something.”
Have you ever thought about your web-surfing habit?
Is it inquisitive or entertaining?
Most of the time we don’t follow much discipline if we are just moving from one website to another or one video to another.
We have to understand our entertaining habit if we never pause to read anything longer than a tweet or short message.
Much of the self-focus comes from integrating habits over time, therefore, we have to guard our everyday habits consciously.
Passing up entertainment for self-focus is hard but achievable, many people have mastered this in their lifetime.
Success requires much more discipline than grabbing a phone and checking tweets and watching TikTok videos.
“One of the pillars of success is focus,” says the author of “The 5AM Club” Robin Sharma.
Success is conditional but it is within our reach as long as we maintain the focus to try, and try again.
Focused habit invites mastery but slowly.
Mastery is inherently a long term game and in such a distracted world, the complete mastery of anything is unattainable but focused habit keeps mastery uptrend.
Serena Williams would never fully master the game of tennis, Tiger Woods would never fully master the game of Golf, and Aamir Khan would never fully master the game of acting, if their focus was out of track.
Meaningful achievement depends on one’s habit and focusing toward the uptrend.
As I mentioned earlier, a focus habit begins with a reward system in kids but it is not a long term solution.
I tell my daughters if you read ten pages today, I will let you watch your favorite movie next Saturday.
They become so happy, they read ten pages with excitement.
Awesome.
I am also quite aware that if I encourage my daughter to read by giving their movie reward, they will become more diligent in the short term and lose interest in reading in the long run when I stop rewarding them.
My personal experience after raising three kids is that reward should only be given to create new habits, otherwise reward motivates them to get rewards only.
Reward could be a groundwork to foster mastery in anything of interest for anybody.
Habit continuously follows the intrinsic motivation toward deep work and deep thinking.
The key is reward should always be only the initiator.
But the habit unknowingly elevates new neural connections in the brain and breaks the path for the reward system to discover new excitements on work of interest.
The beauty is extrinsic motivation of reward flows towards intrinsic motivation for accomplishment of something.
Intrinsic motivation is made, not born, and it always outperforms extrinsic motivation in the long run.
Reward is always external but is one of the tools to take us into the internal.
External is finite but internal is renewable.
External doesn’t promote greater physical and mental well-being but internal promotes both simultaneously.
My personal experience is that joy of reading ‘The Life Machines‘ by Daria Mochly-Rosen becomes similar to watching TikTok video.
If you can not believe it, ask Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, an American psychologist and author of “Finding Flow’, who says, “We reach in the state of flow when we work for our interest, not in leisure.”
Conclusion
From my own life experience and reading, humans’ intrinsic nature is to be curious.
This experience I have, because my wife and I have been around our three children for quite a time.
My wife and I both are in the scientific research field, so we observe things in a scientist way.
Have you ever seen a one year old or a two year old who’s not curious?
We haven’t.
This is one reason we humans are creatures of curiosity.
If at age 10 or 53, we suddenly become passive, that’s not because it’s our character or due to age, it’s because something changed our default brain setting during our growth process.
That’s unknown something is the cause of deterioration of our focus overtime. Chris Bailey, author of ‘Hyperfocus‘ says in his must watch TedTalk “The state of our attention determines the state of our lives.”
Let’s go back to our math problem.
If your final number is 0-3, congratulations.
Your focus power is in uptrend.
At present, the final number for mass population is more than 18.
We have a lot of work to do.
Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.
Disclaimer: “Please note that some links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase through them, at no extra cost to you.”
