
Focus, will you? - kingsidharth
http://www.64notes.com/focus/
======
vitalique
Now pack even more dangerous advice to students in one short article without
too much back up and background, will you? OP jumped from description of his
personal blazingly fast and 'energetic' thought process to generalizations too
quickly, I think.

I actually strongly disagree with both points raised by the author and will
state something quite opposite:

1) Focus is most probably not a direct function of one's mood. Do not mistake
momentary excitement for ability to focus or being in a flow. Bright emotions
come in bursts, quite often they skew and blur the vision and undermine your
ability to think clearly. Basically, untrained person constantly falls prey to
her emotions and impulses. The flow is a state of peace of mind, not of over-
stimulation and constant agitation. Keep emotions for creative sessions (I
don't believe too much in such thing, to be frank), but when you need to focus
- try to get calm and then shift into flow-state.

2) One can - and I think one should - train to concentrate on most kinds of
mental tasks (providing that nothing gets in the way, of course). Focusing
only on what's interesting is very rarely an option. It is much more vital to
be able to focus on what's important rather than on what seems to be really
cool right now - for students and for entrepreneurs especially! And anyway,
almost any big task, however cool, consists of some important not so cool
small steps that can't be ignored. So: do try to focus on one thing at a time,
be ready for your wandering mind to try to take you somewhere else, be ready
to notice patterns of loosing focus (come on, you are _loosing_ focus, not
just _changing_ it), don't over-rationalize or get aggravated at this and just
make conscious effort to stay on topic. Being calm and prepared helps a lot.

Couple of final thoughts about article. Focus is trainable, and in the long
run persistence is what's important, not following your constantly changing
emotions or chasing your thoughts. Multitasking is not suitable for everyone,
not suitable for all types of activities and is almost as dangerous to young
person as promotion of cool-looking do-what-you-want lifestyle to school
students.

------
simonswords82
I believe that a lack of focus - for example being unable to focus on a
discreet task for any length of time, is a bad thing. I've often drafted 10
responses to 10 different e-mails and given myself a mental slap on the wrist
for realising that I've not finished a single one of them. Then the phone
rings...then an employee interrupts me with a question on Skype and before I
know it, it's lunchtime and I've got nothing done.

Focus is something you can learn, and I'm proactively re-wiring my brain
through exercise and meditation to achieve longer levels of focus.

In the meantime - at the start of the day I set up my personal Trello board
with the smallest number of tasks that I must do that day, and so long as
those get done - I'm free to dip in and out of a range of other tasks that my
job as CEO requires of me. This also helps to stop the self-hatred vibe, which
is easy to jump on when I don't feel I've made enough progress in a particular
area of the business.

TL;DR: Being a CEO is tough.

