Working at home sucks. In Berlin, most of the public institutions are closed and restaurants, bars, clubs, and even my Starbucks have a limited opening time. Sitting at home is the worst thing that can happen to me. As a reminder for you and me, we will talk about how to manage your most important resource: focus.
The Focus Trap
We have three resources that are undeniable our most important ones: money, time, and focus. Manage money and time is much easier than managing focus. Money and time can be divided. You can put money either in one or the other pot. Just like time, we can decide who we want to give our precious time to. However, the focus is little understood and easily overseen. Although, today it is the most important resource, the most crucial for our success and our well-being.
It is vitally crucial not only to have focus but also where we direct it. However, instead of choosing where we want to direct our focus, other people decided for us where we direct our focus. Emails, Instagram-Feed, Facebook updates, tweets, text, hyperlinks, videos on websites, and even screens in the real world, in airports, in trains, and on the street – all of them vying for our attention.
In conclusion, all these offerings are thefts, not gifts, losses not wins, debits not credits. An Instagram post, no matter how beautiful, is a debit. Breaking news is a debit. An email (mostly) is a debit. The time we spent reading it we pay in focus, time – or even money. So, why do we let outsiders decide where we should pay our focus on?
5 Advices: How to manage your most important resource
1. Is that relevant?
Do not mistake what is new for what is relevant. All kinds of novelty – product, update, software, item – need an audience. The louder the world, the louder the novelty has to shout to be heard of. So, do not take this shouting seriously. Because novelty that claims as revolutionary is mostly not.
In addition, I got mad when my friend shows me new technology. Lately, it is a tool to organize my life better. As he says, this will boost my productivity. However, he forgets that any kind of new technology brings a huge amount of time to learn it. Is investing time worth the time you should be saving?
2. “Free” Items
Avoid content or technology that is free. The best examples are free apps. You download it, have fun with it but it comes with a huge load of advertisements. And these are truly traps. Why would you voluntarily walk into a trap?
3. Take a step back from Multimedia
With every breaking news, pictures, and videos are coming along. Mostly, gross and horrific images or videos are sold the best. However, they give us the least information about this event. Information is consumed best in its written form. I talked about this earlier in my post about why we shouldn’t read the news.
Coronavirus is now everywhere. Not the level of spreading, I mean it is the talk of the world now. It is fascinating how many people are talking about this and having no clue about it. The best example is my mother and my aunt. All their worries are based on breaking news and social media like Facebook. I cannot stress enough to avoid news and its offspring as possible.
4. Multitasking does not exist
Unless money and time, the focus cannot be divided. If you decide to scroll to your Facebook feed instead of the person in front of you, you show what is important to you. If you have to do something, do it with 100% of your focus and energy.
Multitasking does not exist. It is just switching focus from one task to another. Some can do it real quick, others need time to readjust what they are doing. This is the reason why people get nothing done. For example, I can barely do something productive at home because there are too many distractions. Playing video games, napping, reading, or watching TV. Some may argue that I have no discipline. But I will talk about this in the next post.
5. Stay at the side of strength
When people bring things to your attention unasked, we position ourselves in a weak spot. Why should an advertiser or Facebook tell us where we pay our focus on? An old philosopher Epictetus said once:
If a person gave your body to any stranger he met onhis way, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in handing over your own mind to be confused and mystified by anyone who happens to verbally attack you?
A strong statement Epictetus gave us her. Moreover, he is absolutely right. We have to decide on our own good where we want to put our focus on.
Summary – How to manage your most important resource
In the evolutionary aspect, our brains are programmed to act quickly to fast changes. A spider here and a snake there. It was immensely important to our survival. But now it stands in our way.
Another important aspect of why the focus trap is important. What does focus do with our happiness? Everything. “Your happiness is determined by how you allocate your attention,” wrote Paul Dolan. This is why we are responsible for our life in any aspect. Of course, we cannot decide what will happen to us. But the same life events, good or bad, can influence our happiness strongly, weakly, or not at all – depending on how much attention we give them.
We will always live where our focus is directed. As a result, by learning properly how we manage our most important resources, we will learn how to change our lives.
I will focus further on building my dreams. Because I believe that my focus will bring me there. So be careful who or what you will focus on
Source: The art of good life – Rolf Dobelli