Did you know that every single human is endowed with a superpower? You might find it hard to believe, but it’s true. You have the power of focus. A power unique to humans, at least in the way we can apply it. And if applied correctly, this power can absolutely transform your life.
Today we’re going to be talking about focus as part of a continued series on deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is a way of practicing something for the sake of improvement rather than enjoyment, and it is absolutely transformational. If you missed the first couple of videos in this series, here are the links for videos one and two, but today we’re here to talk about focus, and how unbelievably important it is.
Focus is the second building block of deliberate practice. And not just focus, but absolute focus. Not allowing anything else distracting to come into your mind. That’s easier said than done, but even if you’re like me and you’re easily distracted, well, there’s a lot you can do to make it easier.
I was one of those kids that couldn’t pay attention for more than a few minutes at a time, and that might actually be stretching it. In fact, it wasn’t until I was over 30 that I really learned how to focus.
As humans, we have this magnificent ability to think about what we want to think about. While we still have instincts and natural inclinations like every animal, we also have this strange transcendent peace that will allow us to think about whatever we choose to, no matter what our body is doing, and when we apply this superpower, through deliberate practice to writing, the result is mind-blowing.
One of the reasons that deliberate practice is so impactful or so transformative is that because of focus, it magnifies its effect. If you take somebody and you ask them to practice writing for one hour a day, and they actually do it, then by the end of the week, they’ll have seven hours of practice under their belt. If instead you ask somebody to practice deliberately, that is to apply the principles of deliberate practice for that same one hour, by the end of the first week, they will have the effect of as much as three times the amount of practice. You didn’t read that wrong. For every hour you spend deliberately practicing something, it’s the equivalent of more than three hours of just practicing it.
Focus is the linchpin of how this works.
This is why, even though I’ve only been writing and publishing for five years, I have the equivalent of 15 years of practice as an author. This is the thing that has allowed me to write 27 books in those five years. 27 books is enough for an entire career, let alone five years, and what’s crazy is that I’ve written the majority of them in the last two years. Over half. The reason is because my focus continues to get deeper, it continues to get sharper as I continue to practice it.
So the question is, how do we do this? If you want to apply focus to your writing, then the first thing you need to do is just get really good at eliminating distractions. Let’s start simply. Find a place to write where you’re not going to be distracted by the things around you. Ideally, you want to find a place that is blank. That is a corner with simple white walls or a place where there’s nothing that’s going to catch your eye and pull your attention away from what it is you’re focused on. You don’t want movement. You don’t want bright colors. You don’t want anything in your field of view except your writing.
I can already hear the creatives who are watching this just groaning. And every time I explain this to someone, I almost invariably get a, “Seth, that’s not how my creative process works. I need to be able to see things to be creative.”
No, you don’t.
Excuse me for being blunt, but that’s a lie you’re telling yourself because your brain doesn’t want to do work. It’s uncomfortable to sit in a space with no distractions, which is why very, very few of us do it. But if you can, you’re going to find your productivity shoots through the roof. You’re going to find that your brain starts doing the actual work because that’s the only thing it can do.
Every time you introduce a distraction, something to pull your attention away, whether that’s a sound or a smell or a visual cue, your brain eagerly jumps on that new thing because our brains are hardwired to want new things. It’s only by eliminating all of those things ruthlessly that we can train our brain to desire to do work.
This ruthless elimination of distractions is not comfortable, but it is necessary if you want to get really good. The more you deliberately practice using absolute focus, the easier it’s going to become. It’s like sledding down a hill. The first time you go down freshly fallen snow, it’s going to be a slower ride because your sled has to pack the snow down as you’re traveling. The second time, it’s going to be even faster as your weight continues to compress the snow under you, forming a smooth shoot. By the fourth, fifth, sixth time you go down, you’re going to be flying because the work of creating the channel is already done. Now you can enjoy the reward, blistering speed as the freezing wind slaps you in the face.
Focus is exactly like this. If you want the thing, you have to do the work. If you want to focus, you have to focus. When I started writing, I set an hour a day for myself to write. At first, I couldn’t keep focused at all. It wasn’t until I started eliminating all of the things that served as a distraction that I found myself actually able to work for an hour. But as my career has advanced, an hour hasn’t been enough. I started working for two hours, and then three, and then four, and then five.
Now, if you tell me, “Seth, you need to write for eight hours today,” you know what I say? Let’s get to it. I’ve done it so many times so deliberately that I’ve already smoothed out that channel. There’s no reason for me to balk or say no. Because not only do I know that I can do it, but my brain is used to it. My mind isn’t fighting against me anymore. I’ve made it an ally instead of an enemy.
If you apply focus like this, it will transform your life. Whether it’s around writing, or being an author, or something else entirely, it doesn’t matter. Focus is a superpower. One that you have. You just have to use it.
YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/a5ZkwZrpCUc
Thanks for reading and watching.
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