Musings on focus and desire
I just read The sweet spot of productivity by Ben Yu and was inspired to document and share some of the processes that help me shut out distractions and GSFWD.
First of all, to frame this in the proper manner, let me rewrite the previous sentence.
When I was scanning my RSS feeds during a recent structured break I enjoyed The sweet spot of productivity by Ben Yu and was inspired to clip it to Evernote for use during the next scheduled writing time to relate to topics I had previously identified that are consistent with the focus of this blog.
What a difference some framing and reformatting makes! The difference between the original and the edited passage isn’t monumental, but the focus and predetermination speak much more clearly to being productive versus being busy. As I’ve gotten deeper into using LifeHacker; Pomodoro timers; The Secret Weapon; and other techniques, I’ve developed a habitual self-awareness that has exponentially effected my productivity. Paul Jun sums up this change in mindset well in his post How to Read Self-Help:
With humility, of course, I have certainly changed my habits and mind over the last few years, only because I made it an obsession, something that had to be done. I’ve become very mindful of what I do and why I do it; I learned to be aware of what I tell myself in situations where I would normally lash out or criticize or not pay attention. I exercise self-awareness daily, in a sense that I can acknowledge and own my flaws, mistakes, and hindrances. Being aware of all this, it has helped me lead a better life because I knew what had to be done; I knew where I stood; I knew who I was and wanted to become.
All of the self-help books in the world won’t do anything until you spend enough time bored, pissed, lonely, or depressed (when all are combined it’s called “The Fuck-its”) in the pursuit of figuring out what you truly desire out of life.
Desire has been an overused term since the beginning of self-help books, with recent books like The Secret extolling a law of attraction theory in which whatever you desire the most will be auto-magically attracted to you. This isn’t new, in fact, it’s in some of the oldest books around.
“And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” -Matthew 21:22 English Standard Bible
“Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.” Bhagavad Gita
“Truly, God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” -Quran 13:11
Now this post is by no means religious, but the above quotes exemplify how long humanity has wrestled with how to manifest our goals and dreams.
The commonly heard “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life!” or “Follow your passion!” were frustrating as shit to me personally. The assumption of those aphorisms is that you actually know what your passion is, or know what you would do if money was no object.
While there are many who know what they want to do early in life, I think there’s a lot of us have no fucking idea what we’d actually love to do beyond something else. We’ve never taken or had time to think about it! Between television, work, school, commuting, video games, and relationships; modern society has been optimized to keep you too busy to really focus on your inner self for it to happen accidentally.
It wasn’t until I was 34 or so that I had a breakthrough. As an extrovert, loneliness was my achilles heel, combined with undiagnosed depression. I’ve always had an easy time making friends and getting along in social situations, but when alone, I’d nap or find something else to keep my mind busy so I didn’t have to spend time in my own head.
Sounds fucking depressing, right? I mean, think of spending a night on a bad blind date or having to travel for business with someone you can’t stand—when you’re unhappy and unfulfilled, that person is with you all the time!
For me it took a divorce, a drinking problem that resulted in a DUI, and the resulting 90 days in the county lockup to get my consciousness to finally reboot. Thankfully friends—this is not the only option!
I’m sharing this because today, a few years after being at my lowest, I am in one of the most fulfilling periods of my life.
From being a lifelong extrovert who was constantly out at bars, over at friends houses, or on the phone to enjoy myself—I’ve transitioned into someone who goes days at a time without feeling the need to use the phone.
From a person who hit snooze until there was no WAY I’d be on time (just adding stress), to now waking up to no alarm, usually with ideas or something on my mind that I am happy to get up and work on.
I’m sure a lot of us upon receiving a large cash infusion might drink in the tropics for a bit, but then what? Conversely, it can be just as paralyzing to have seemingly limitless choices. If you are unhappy with how things are going in your (life, health, marriage, business, career) what I’ve realized is the only way to change this is to maximize your exposure to the pain that not being who or where you want to be in life is causing.
In The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle speaks of having a epiphany during a period he was minutes or hours away from suicide. To paraphrase, his consciousness was so painfully depressed, that he felt his brain just broke it like the body goes into shock in moments of extreme duress—and has since been in a blissfully self-aware and present state.
If you’re lonely, spend time alone and unoccupied. Meditate. Think about why you’re lonely, or don’t think at all. Do not placate this with music or other things to block out the initially painful silence.
If you’re angry, find some isolated place in the woods and scream your lungs out and cuss and swear till you have nothing left. Go to the gym and punch the heavy bag till your ass is toast. Now that the vitriol is gone, and your mind is clear, perhaps it will become clearer where the source of rage is.
Whatever the flavor of your discontent, the crucial part of this strategy is not to distract yourself from your self. The angst and pain you feel is your consciousness displaying it’s version of a check engine light.
You can continue to do what you’re doing, but in this case (because you are going to kick ass, right?) you’re going to pull over for as long as it takes to determine the problem. If you do this for 3 minutes, 3 days, or even 3 weeks—you may not see great results. This is a “how to change your life in 1000 days” kind of plan. But you know what? The time is going to pass regardless, and once you start moving forward, you’re going to enjoy an inordinately larger number of those days.
Now we started this focused on….focus. From here it’s pretty simple. Once the minutiae and cobwebs of confusion from a lack of passion are eliminated, it’s shockingly easier to move forward. For me the process that works goes like this:
- Write down what you want to accomplish. 1 week, 1 month, 1 year is how I break it down.
- For each time frame, write down actions you can take to make one small step forward.
- Become fastidious about taking notes and bookmarking relevant information. I use a combination of Evernote for all notes/ideas, Pocket to save and tag websites for later reference, and a cheap spiral notebook to write down and check off daily tasks. For reminders, I have Google Calendar send sms alerts to my phone.
- When I’m in work mode, I use the Strict Pomodoro Chrome plugin to work in 25 minute increments interspersed with 5 minute breaks. During the work sessions, the extension blocks a customizable list of websites that aren’t crucial to your work. Once I hit the timer, I now have stopped thinking about time, and don’t usually notice the 25 minutes pass until the alarm pops up.
- Embrace RSS and create a curated list of sites structured around things your passionate about. I recommend using The Old Reader. What this accomplishes is it allows you to avoid the cheap and distracting seats of the general web and hang out in the cerebral VIP area of your choosing.
- Continually refine your process. As you make a habit of being constantly aware of how your thoughts, behaviors and processes fit into the context of what your goals and passions are, every day it becomes easier to naturally avoid things. You will lose interest in things outside of the pursuit of your goal(s).
- Help others by sharing in forums related to self-improvement and your particular field of interest (cooking, writing, coding, whatever) when you’re at a time in your schedule that allows for it. Reddit, StackExchange and Quora have very knowledgable communities on almost any interest you can think of.
- If you have vices or habits that are having an impact on your progress, ask for help, and write down some reasons why they might be taking you off path. When I say vice, it’s not from any moral ground at all, rather, a vice can be any activity that morphs into an unhealthy percentage of your resources, thoughts, and consequences. Drinking, smoking, gaming, sleeping, and even obsessively reading self-help books and blogs can all qualify. Don’t worry, you get a mulligan on self-help books at the beginning, because depending on how long you’ve spent in a less than optimized frame of mind, body and soul the more positive stuff rammed into your brain can help push out the bullshit :-)
- When you’re making changes in your life, you are probably going to alienate and lose some friends. Unfortunately, a lot of your friends don’t want you to change. Stay true and move forward.
I am not a life coach or professional counselor of course, just a guy who’s enjoying the pursuit of improvement. If you have any comments or are curious about anything, hit me up, I enjoy helping others on the quest.
This post simultaneously published at Bahner.co
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