Hocus Pocus: This is How to Stay Focused!
Learning how to stay focused has a lot in common with magic. In fact, if you think about it, magicians themselves must know how to stay focused or else their magic show will end up being a shitshow!
Have you ever watched a good magician who was distracted, tired and not motivated? Of course not! For a magician to be on top of his or her game, they need to be extremely focused!
It is the same with you…
Not being able to focus is a huge productivity killer that affects the number of tasks we can accomplish in both our personal and professional lives.
Being able to focus means being able to tune out all the outside noise, all the distractions, and all the interruptions that get us off track!
According to NY Times bestselling author, Steven Kotler, flow is an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and we perform our best. You can think of it akin to a ‘runner’s high’ or ‘being in the zone’. It is those moments of rapt attention and total absorption where you are so focused on the task that everything else just disappears. At that point, time passes quickly, and all aspects of performance go through the roof. According to some studies, productivity rises by over 500%, learning accelerates 470%, and creativity spikes 400-700% when we are in a flow (or very focused) state. Wow!
Can We Learn How to Stay Focused?
Yes! The idea is that you need to train your brain to focus for maximum performance.
Today, I am going to show you a few tricks I have learned from the magical art of how to stay focused; and how you can use them in your life!
But before we get to them, there are a few other things we need to take care of to ‘set the stage’ for our tricks.
Like Any Good Magician…
You need to put yourself in the best possible position to succeed. Which begs the question, how often do you see a great magician yawning and with bags under their eyes?
Rarely!
The same thing goes with focus and being in flow. Just as a magician needs to have enough energy to perform, you need to build up your energy reserves so that you to be able to access those flow states.
This can be accomplished by making sure that you:
Get enough sleep and are well rested.
Consume a healthy diet.
Are adequately hydrated.
Have gotten enough exercise.
Now That You Have Taken Care of Yourself…
It is time to take care of your environment. Have you ever seen a magician practicing his tricks in an obnoxiously loud and insane environment?
Negative!
It is imperative for you to choose an environment free of distractions, both physical and online. You can do this by:
Closing your door.
Turning off or putting away your phone.
Staying off the internet and social media.
Working from a different location.
Only you know what type of environment works best for you, so it’s on you to put yourself in that environment.
A Good Magician Never Flies by the Seat of Their Pants!
They always schedule and block out time to practice their magic! The same goes for you, it is imperative that you block your calendar ahead of time to get focused work done. We will get to the amount of time you will need in a moment, but it is imperative that you make the time. One tool you can use is the time blocking method that we discussed in a previous post.
Kotler himself gets up extremely early to do his most focused work. No one else is up and it’s so early it almost makes him feel like he isn’t stealing time from anything else. This magician does the same and I cannot tell you how great it feels to get stuff done before the sun even comes up!
Now That You Have Taken Care of the Prerequisites…Abracadabra!!!
It’s time to learn some tricks on how to stay focused!
According to Kotler, the highest flow environments that have been found, other than sports, occurred in Montessori education. And one of the hallmarks of Montessori education is that it consists of 90 to 120-minute periods of uninterrupted concentration.
Keeping that in mind, let’s now move onto 3 tricks you can use to improve your focus…
Train Your Brain
It turns out that as we just mentioned about Montessori education, 90 to 120 minutes of focus is what you need. But you won’t get there right away, just like magicians are not able to make the Statue of Liberty disappear right away! You need to start by picking smaller time periods to focus on at first as you won’t be able to focus for 120 minutes right away. Kotler suggests starting with smaller periods, for example, start with 7 minutes and add a bit more each day. Adding a bit more and doing it every day is crucial to building the “focus muscle” just like you build your muscles in the gym.
He also suggests that when you begin you should focus on something that matters most to you. By focusing on something you love to do, it will be easier to pay attention and generate flow.
Train Your Life
Next, you need to find the time slot(s) you plan to be focused. This means talking to your boss, coworkers, or spouse ahead of time to let them know that you need some uninterrupted time which is based on performance science to maximize your focus and productivity. If not, you may be subjected to guilt, which is emotionally taxing and will just end up stealing the energy that is better applied to be focused. So, if you need to respond to emails every 10 minutes, or you can’t hang a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on your door, you’re screwed!
Mine the Transitions
So far, we have focused on one important task. For our last trick, we will discuss transitioning from one task to another.
Where many of us get tripped up, yours truly included, is in the transition to our next task. Invariably, what screws us up is checking email or social media between tasks; this gets our emotions involved which takes us out of our focused or flow state.
How can we go from task to task without losing focus?
One way is by being mindful of the transitions or the gaps between tasks that usually trip us up. So, we need to really try to focus directly and train ourselves to automatically go to the next task without getting distracted.
Another thing Kotler suggests is doing some deep breathing exercises for a few minutes. This helps to refresh our system without losing our focus.
Now that you know the go-to tricks to make some magic on how to stay focused, let’s discuss…
A Few Other Things You May Want to Keep in Mind:
Keep an organized workspace:
It is tough to focus if there is shit all over your desk or if your environment looks like a tornado just hit it. Declutter and tidy things up!
Don’t multitask:
There have been a ton of studies done that show we don’t multi-task well. Start by picking one important thing and focusing on it.
Practice meditation:
The average goldfish can pay attention for 9 seconds, we can pay attention for 8 seconds. Meaning in these hyper-stimulated times characterized by social media, a goldfish can pay attention longer than the average human. But attention and focus are elastic, and we can train them to improve. And according to Kotler, focus is an easy thing to change! One way to improve focus is to practice mindfulness meditation. Studies show that after meditating for only 4 days of 20 minutes a day you can see a significant improvement in your cognitive performance and focus.
Challenge yourself
We focus best when the task is 4% harder than our skillset – which is just a bit outside our comfort zone. It helps release chemicals cortisol and norepinephrine which will help us pay attention better. They say 4% is the sweet spot because it releases just a little bit of norepinephrine, which comes with anxiety, but not too much which is associated with fear and blocks flow.
Limit news:
As I stated in a previous post, I don’t watch the news as it creates fear and anxiety which are enemies of flow. You really need to manage fear and anxiety in your life, a little is good and will help you focus. Interestingly, Kotler only reads the Economist and New Scientist to limit the bias and receive the clearest information. Otherwise, anxiety bubbles up under the surface and it becomes harder to enter a flow state.
Be grateful:
Creating a gratitude list first thing helps the brain feel safe and secure by focusing on the positive instead of the negative. It helps lower cortisol and anxiety levels, as too much anxiety limits focus.
Music:
Can be hugely important in helping you get into flow. When he is writing, Kotler creates a playlist of 12-15 songs that help him enter flow. You need to find the music that does the trick for you.
Caffeine:
Some people find that caffeine helps them focus. If that is you, grab some coffee!
Well, that’s it for today’s lesson on the magic of how to stay focused, it is now time for me to vanish like the Statue of Liberty.
My next magic trick will be figuring out how to get this damn hangover to disappear…
Until next time, keep working your magic on how to stay focused, watch out for draft beer and as always…PYMFP!
Cheers,
–Rick
Use It or Lose It – How to Stay Focused:
To stay focused:
Take care of yourself.
Take care of your environment.
Block out some time.
Use Kotler’s 3 tricks:
Train your brain
Train your life
Mine the transitions
Utilize the other things we said to keep in mind: keep an organized workspace, don’t multitask, practice meditation, challenge yourself, limit news, be grateful, use music, consume caffeine if it works for you.
When to Use It:
Whenever you need to focus!
What Do You Think?
How well do you stay focused? Will you try any of the tricks for how to stay focused we discussed? Please share in the comments below!
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Thanks for sharing Rick- love this. Flow is actually next on my booklist!
Thanks for reading and commenting Melissa! I read Flow years ago, probably one of the best and most cited books on the subject! Best, Rick
Staying focused means simply ignoring everything around you – noise, temperature, pets, people wandering in/out of the room – and concentrating only on the task. It can happen without you realizing it – becoming so fascinated by the murder mystery that you are reading that 2 hours have gone by without you realizing it. Or you can force yourself to focus. Before writing these comments, I immersed myself in a genealogical problem where two dates in the 1400’s conflicted, the son was born before the mother. I had to straighten this mess out before continuing, so set aside part of the afternoon and dug back through both the printed references and my computer notes. Found it! I had confused two women with the same last name, both having the first name of Euphemia. I know what you are thinking – who names their kid Euphemia? But it was popular in Scotland during this time frame.
I became so focused on the problem that I did not hear my wife come back from shopping, put groceries away, or see her sit down in an adjacent chair. Only when she asked me a question did I ‘pop out of the trance’.
Now on to magic. I have seen Penn and Teller perform twice, and met them afterwards once. (Spoiler alert – Teller can talk.) These guys have focusing and concentration down to an exact science. Example – Penn’s nail gun trick. He takes a loaded nail gun and tells a convoluted story about how to safely use it, all the while punching nails into a board but often aiming the gun at the side of his head and pulling the trigger. One mistake and he’s dead. He even fakes miscounting, but its all part of the show.
These guys practice and rehearse sometimes for as much as 8 months to a year on an illusion – tweaking, adjusting, moving the props maybe an inch or so, altering the dialog so that an action and a certain word occur simultaneously.
So much easier focusing on some tasks that I find pleasant and enjoyable, such as my historical research and my writing. These responses to your articles come easy. Just set down at the keyboard and let the words flow. Something disgusting, like mowing the lawn or raking up dead leaves – snarling and growling to myself – when will this be over with. Stuff that needs done, but my mind wanders elsewhere. I still push the mower, use the rake, but I’m not concentrating, just going through the motions.
OK, fun is over with. Time to return to the real world. Let us focus again tomorrow.
Sounds like you were definitely in flow Dave – yes definitely doing something like and are interested in has been shown to help get you focused or ‘in flow’. Cool story on Penn and Teller! I had no idea they practiced and rehearsed that long, wow! Be good! Rick