ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER POST,

One major aspect of our lives, that we all try to improve upon is the ability to focus. Many time people often find themselves saying “if I could only focus more on this”, “sorry I just have short attention span”, or “I have issue focusing.” Well you don’t need to worry about that anymore, by the end of this blog post, you will be able to focus more, and have fun while focusing.

How do we generally define focus? It can be simply defined to as a state of concentration. Hence, focusing is the act of concentrating your attention, energy, or efforts on a specific task, object, or goal while minimizing distractions.

Some people have an unrealistic idea about focusing. They feel like, it’s the act of being completely immense in what you are doing, with no distraction at all, and without your mind wandering. However, your mind wandering is essential to focusing

During my early secondary school day, when I tried to learn how to improve my focus, I had this false assumption of being completely immersed in my work like a shaolin monk. So hence I use to think my mind wandering was me doing something wrong. Until I started learning mediation form a random Ted talk video, shockingly enough, from a shaolin monk. Then stumbling on Hyper focus, then further research on focusing, helped me understand this state of concentration better.

Let me breakdown the process of focusing

1. Intention
2. Concentration 
3. Mind wandering
4. Re-Concentration

In writing this blog I procrastinated 5hours just to start focusing in the afternoon to make sure the technique work (P.S Don’t procrastinate your work)

Step 1, before you start any focus session or task you must plan it ahead of time, because your intention precede attention, meaning you must be intentional about what you want to focus on, and you do that by planning your task before time. Be it a day before or planning your afternoon and evening in the morning, or planning even a few minute before hand, as long as your intention precede your attention is will help with greater concentration on the task at hand. 

Step 2, concentration, this synonymously can be interchange with focusing, meaning concentrating on a particular task. This is a state of focus and attention on the task you already plan to do.

Step 3, Your mind will start wandering, imagining events, activities any thing other than what you are supposed to be focusing on, especially doing intellectual work, the mind tends to wander more. This is how we are biologically program, the brain seek pleasure, a sense of enjoyment, (Allow me to enjoy myself). So the brain will like to shift its focus from the task on ground.

This is very normal. Mind wandering is not a distraction, it is the very essence of human creativity, you cannot stop your mind from wandering, from reflecting, that’s the period in which you come up with the most interesting and intriguing idea. Studies has shown that the mind wander 30-50% of the time, regardless of whether the task at hand is simple or complex. Hence your mind wandering is a good thing.

Step 4, and final steps. Mind wandering in itself is a good thing. What becomes problematic is the inability to observe when your mind has drifted and consciously guide it back to the present task.

That the key, the secret of focus is mindfulness, and many people who mediate know this. Because if you perceive focus as a state of uninterrupted distraction, it’s just unrealistic.

Hence, the simply process of Focusing is concentration, internal distraction (Mind wandering) and reconcentration. This is similar to mindfulness being aware of your thought and emotions and intentionally redirecting your focus to the task at hand.

Upgrading the Pomodoro technique

The Pomodoro technique is quite famous in the productivity space. The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s that boosts productivity by breaking work session into various time block, followed by a few minute break in-between the time blocks. The most commonly used time block is 25min and 5min break. This technique is a systematic time based approach to focusing. Over time when using this technique, I have filtered a few improvement towards its application;

1. The most common mistake of this method is the time slotted for rest. The idea is nice but not practical. You work for 25min per session, for 4 sessions, and 5 min break, it all surmount to 1hour 50min work session and only 20min break. Now here is the first fix about the pomodoro method, each session of work you do you should gradually increase the resting period. For example, I do 30min of work then 5 min of rest, then another 30min, then 10 min of rest, then the last 30 min, 15min of rest. This is a progressive reward system for your body that will keep you energize and more engage in your tasks at hand

• Another mistake I see people doing is, Not Stopping When The Timer Stop. Although this is controversial and I love controversial, (Because no matter what you say everyone must have their own opinion, that doesn’t mean you should not express yourself point.) My personal goal is to work with less and less emotion, to execute my work like a robot.

Leave less and less decision to be based off emotions. “Experts will often tell you, if you’re still feeling it when the timer ends, ride that wave and keep going”. BIG NO, you know why because it making you work more and more based on emotions, feeling, and when you are in the intellectual field, you can’t work based on feeling because there are days you won’t feel like reading, feel like research or writing that article. Hence as soon as the timer stop, you stop, wherever you are in, in what you are doing just stop, be it in the middle of the paragraph or about starting a new heading, just stop, this fulfills the human need to complete unfinished tasks, making your body, mind, and curiosity instinctively crave the next session once your break ends.

Brain Priming

This technique need a dedicated blog on its own. This is what I’m currently researching and experimenting on which is brain priming.

After reading the book on atomic habit and watching some habit building system, I stumble on one re-occurring trend, the ability to prime your brain to know when to do a particular task.

Some example that are given in atomic habit, if you want to write more use your desk for that particular task, if you want to improve your sleep, only lay on your bed the moment you want to sleep. When I was in university, I stumbled on this fact, thus I stopped reading on my bed, I stop eating on my bed, I divided my bed into sections, so there is a particular place I sit, but when I want to sleep, I lay down. This greatly improved my sleep and also my interaction with my roommates, because I go and disturb them.

Productivity expert encode this method in their daily lives. For example, Ali abdaal has already gotten eye surgery so he doesn’t need to wear his glasses. However, he states that “wearing his glasses allow him to give presentation must fluently,” priming his brain to be more efficient in public speaking when he wear his glasses.

Another productivity expert Chris bailey, advocate for the specialization of devices to a particular task. For example, the use of laptop solely for research work, the use of iPad for reading and the use of his personal device for social media. This prime his brain to be more focused when doing each of those task.

I will deeply dive into a more research dense post, on this particular topic on brain priming, so look forward to it, and be ready to boost your productivity and focus by 10x.

Activities to implement to improve

Activities you can implement to improve your focus

1. Increase your reward system, promise yourself a reward or a treat after every focus session, be it buying yourself something later in the day, watching a series, movie etc. Just follow through with your reward system. Your brain doesn’t repeat any activity that is not reward, that why bad habit tends to stick, because the pleasure provides the brain with that reward. 

• Schedule your use of social media: I have preached this and I will continue to preach this, and you can read more on this on my post titled, “The Synthetic Glitch: Addiction in the Digital Age.” All this social media companies are not your friend, this multi-billion dollar companies, spend billion into research on psychology, dopamine, addiction to keep you scrolling, to keep you on the app. Using social media isn’t a bad thing don’t get me wrong, even me after a stressful day I like to unwind with some of Ray William true crime stories. The way you regain this control is by intentionally scheduling your use of social media to the tea. Eg I will use Tiktok 3 times today, 1hour each, from 9am,12am and 5pm.

• Implement 1hour/45min/30min of no technology detox: This is one of this best advice I have stumble upon. Have a dedicated time slot within your day, be it an 1hour, 45min or 30min, in which you do not use your device, just you, your thought and a notebook. This greatly increase your focus and mindfulness of your internal thoughts. Pastor Chris calls this Quiet time. The bridge between you and greatness is the treasure hidden within your mind.

• Practicing mediation, I use to mediate a lot when I was in secondary school and also watch many video behind the benefit of mediation, and one of the benefit is an increase in mindfulness and focus, (All my research on mediation will have its own designated Blog post). One key thing you should know, mediation doesn’t depend on the length of time you mediate for, this same benefit from mediation can gotten form a 5min/10min compared to a 45min/1hour session.