To say I am one who gets distracted by shiny things is an understatement.
Focus can be the toughest thing to do (not do?)
Focusing has and will always be one of the toughest aspects of life for myself. There never goes an hour where I can’t find 5 minutes wasted on unproductive actions. No matter what new, fantastic way I try to keep me on task, I usually find myself wandering in one way or another.
So, what is it that really leads to this problem? I don’t know. I see many factors coming into play.
I could blame any of the following….
- Television
- Cell Phone
- The Internet
- Site Stats
….but what I should do is…
Blame Myself
Often, I make excuses as to what the real issue is within a problem. I find some outside reasoning for whatever ails me. However, more often than not it is the man in the mirror who is to blame.
Before I head off in tangents that do not focus this article on the topic at hand, I’d love to hear what you think. What are your reasons for not staying focused? Why do you believe you fail at focusing? Let me know in the comments section….
Schucks...This one is super unique. No similar posts.
When I fail to focus it’s quite clear where it went wrong: to many things I want to be doing. Always something new to try and never sticking with a single idea/goal.
If you manage to stick with something for 10 years, you’ll master it. But most of us hardly make it a month. (Why I’ve been blogging for more than a year now is a mystery to me… all I know is it’s fun to do and rewarding)
Our generation (the 20 somethings and 10 somethings) are all trained by the mass media to expect a change every few seconds. Just watch a tv show and see how often the camera angle changes. It’s insane how fast it goes sometimes, yet me manage to keep up.
So as soon as something doesn’t go that fast, we get bored. It’s not as exciting.
At least, that’s how I see it.
Hey Christiaan—
You bring up a great point that Leo Babauta talks about. Focus on one thing.
I don’t do this enough and realize its something I can work on.
How do you do better at this?
David Damron
LifeExcursion
Of course we all have the endless buffet of modern distractions that cause us to lose focus, but looking a little deeper than that (and assuming we can fend off all of these distractions), I see two barriers.
The first is a lack of clearly defined goals and plans of action to accomplish those goals. If you don’t know where you’re going, you may not get there.
The second is self-doubt. When we really believe in ourselves, we get into the flow and can stay focused for hours. When we have doubt, time drags on and little gets accomplished.
Those are a couple of the things that I’ve been working on recently and focusing on them has been huge.
Hey Hugh—
I do believe lack of clearly defined goals is one of the major hurdles. I rarely, if ever, get anything done without a checklist. That goes for immediate and long term goals.
Thanks for sharing Hugh!!!
David Damron
LifeExcursion
Despite the fast that we all need a defined set of GOALS (= where we would to come?), a focus technique like “Pomodoro Technique” (http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/) could really help to re-gain the ability to focusing.
Thanks for the link Carlo….Appreciate your thoughts