Focus

This Month: Focus

 

Our theme this month is Focus.

I confess that when it comes to my 10 Strategies for Bringing Your Vision to Life, the one I struggle with the most is “Narrow Your Focus”.

I have so many ideas, so many interests. There are so many projects, hobbies, places, people, possibilities, and aspirations that call to me. And so I find it hard to set aside multiple appealing options in order to focus on just ONE for a while.

I suspect I’m not alone in this.

And yet as much as I struggle to “narrow my focus,” I also know how important it is if I want to lead a happier, more effective, more beautiful life.

This holds true on the most basic of levels. When we bring a mindful focus to each moment (rather than scattering our attention through multitasking or thinking ahead to what’s coming next), we are happier, less stressed, more connected, and more productive.

And of course it also holds true as we look at life through progressively larger lenses. Narrowing your focus for your day, your week, your month, or even longer periods of time is a powerful time management strategy, allowing us to get more done faster. We build momentum this way. We stop losing time to the “switching costs” that come with constantly changing focus. And we reap the positive emotional and energetic rewards of seeing ourselves make real progress.

But there’s also something existentially satisfying about picking a meaningful focus and sticking with it. Even if it’s just for a day or an afternoon, being able to label that stretch of time as being “about” or “in service of” one particular thing somehow helps the day feel richer and less like a meaningless blur of activity.

So as we enter into this “back to school” time of year which lends itself so naturally to this topic, I thought we’d bring some focus to the subject of focus! I look forward to exploring this theme together and to supporting one other in the discipline of doing one meaningful thing at a time.

Explore this theme inside Joybook…