Stop trying to focus, and do this instead:

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Mastery Den, Saturday Edition, 4-min read, From a café in Sofia, Bulgaria.

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'I wish I could find my focus,' you say.

'I'm just so unfocused. I always waste time and procrastamacate.'

Ok, so you want to be more 'focused.' But do we even know what we mean by 'focus' half the time?

'Focus' is a concept that describes where you put your attention and how effectively that attention is used.

When you focus on several things at once, or your concentration is poor - you spread your awareness more thinly, and your focus diminishes.

Here's the thing: we're all focused. It's just that some of us are focused on better things that serve them. You can be a focused video gamer and go years without developing that creative project you'd initially planned.

Maintaining the right kind of focus is a skill. This is essentially the act of continually redirecting your attention towards what matters most. We need it to enjoy the rewards of putting sustained and channelled attention on the things that matter.

But I learned one thing about focus that changed everything for me. For years, I thought focus required a concerted effort. I thought you needed to grit your teeth, be tough, and furrow your brow to be focused.

Yeah, good luck with that, numb nuts.

I found focus is more about letting go than 'trying hard.'

The skill here is in the letting go.

When I prioritised the need to focus, I became more stressed because I felt I was falling short and not doing enough. This pressure reduced my effectiveness because no one works well when they are stressed and frustrated.

We can fool ourselves into thinking that more pressure and stress lead to more focus. This is one of the greatest myths circulating in society today. It's silly sauce.

Our best work happens when we're relaxed.

The truth of this is perhaps most evident in sports. Imagine you're playing tennis and about to play an important point. When you put pressure on yourself to perform and 'focus,' you'll tighten up. When you're tight, you hit the ball funny, and it goes in the net, and you scream at the gods and look a fool.

The best players are often the quickest to move on from a lost point. They keep their composure and they're skilled at remaining relaxed and loose.

The same applies to elite focus.

So now we know two things:

1. Focus happens when your concentration on any one thing is maximised.

2. Your performance is highest when you're relaxed.

This means that doing one thing at a time, without interfering distractions, and free of self-pressure is the way.

When we do one thing at a time, without the continual strain from thinking of all the other things we need to do, we return to our relaxed nature by default.

We start to enjoy the thing because fun happens in the vacuum left by an absence of doubt and worry. That's how to be more focused.

We think less about needing to be focused and do one thing at a time with enjoyment.

Enjoyment is something we bring to the task at hand. It isn’t conditional on the task. It took me a long time to realise this.

But what you're doing has little bearing on how much fun you can have doing it. We think we must have an interest, passion, or love for something before we can expect to enjoy it.

But you can enjoy doing the dishes or cleaning bird doo-doo off your car roof. It requires you to find the creative part of yourself, which is capable of not judging and just enjoying yourself by doing.

Enjoying what you are doing is so significant in the context of finding focus, because focus IS enjoyment.

Read that again:

Focus is enjoyment.

The same thing.

This is why so many people struggle with finding focus. Or they focus on pleasurable things that don't ultimately serve their lives.

First, they dissuade themselves from enjoying the work because they say it isn't for them. They literally tell themselves that, 'This sucks.'

With that damning judgement, they can't possibly have fun doing it because they've already established it as tedious or difficult.

And without the enjoyment that reveals itself when you let go to a task without judgement, you will struggle to focus.

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Let go, do one thing at a time with enjoyment, and you will be focused.

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Buy Alex’s book, ‘The Art of Self Respect: Twenty-five subtle habits for cultivating deep self-respect and attracting the respect of others.’

Here is Alex’s latest book, ‘Creatively Jacked: 43 badass motivation ideas for ambitious creators, today. The above article is an excerpt taken from this book.

Contact Alex here if you’d like to discuss how he can work with you to help achieve your goals.