You Must Focus

Warren Buffet and Bill Gates were at some party. They were asked to write down what made them successful on a piece of paper. Both at the time didn’t know each other well nor did they know what the other person wrote. When the answers were revealed, both had written the same word: focus.

This isn't a particularly new insight. The war strategist turned emperor Napoleon built an empire and ran it efficiently because he was able to focus. He was able to compartmentalize different ideas in his brain as his biographer Andrew Roberts writes. He once told a minister, “Different subjects and different affairs are arranged in my head as in a cupboard. When I wish to interrupt one train of thought, I shut that drawer and open another. Do I wish to sleep? I simply close all the drawers, and there I am -- asleep.”

In current times, everything around us is trying to get our attention. We are bombarded with notifications from social media applications that have the sole purpose of keeping us on the platform. We are shown ads for products that will seemingly solve our problems and make us more productive. We get emails and messages at work asynchronously which most often distracts us from the work at hand. It’s surprising we get any work done.

We need to regain our ability to focus, both for the long and short term.

Short-term focus lets us complete our daily tasks. It’s spending 4 hours without any distraction on the project at work. It’s reading a book for a few hours straight to learn something new. It’s being able to pay attention in meetings without getting the urge to check Slack.

Switching airplane mode on your phone will eliminate any notifications. Blocking out time for deep work on the calendar ensures you can focus. Swallow the toad first thing in the morning, as Nicolas Chamfort tells us, instead of checking emails or messages.

Long-term focus is the direction we want to go and the ability to say no to things that stop us from doing this. It's much harder to focus for a longer period of time.  It requires you to stay dedicated to a particular skill and not move on to the next novel thing. It’s having to say no to things that don’t matter, so you can focus on what is essential.

Seneca talks urges us to be greedy with our time, and that’s what focusing lets us do. We can choose where we spend our time instead of someone or something deciding for us.

What I Have Been Consuming The Past Week

To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink. A book that tries to convince us that we all work in sales in some way or the other. We all try to sell something to other people, whether it's an actual product or an idea. The book also has some techniques on how to sell better, and is worth checking out.

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