Finding Focus
This article originally appeared as one of my monthly letters. I send a monthly newsletter with reflections about the month's learnings and experiences.
I’ve got a confession.
I lost focus this month. Not just lost sight of my monthly focus but lost the concept altogether.
No matter how much reading, thinking and writing I do about dreaming, planning and making goals happen — I still can’t quite shake the feeling that things are supposed to be linear and progressive.
Every so often I regress, forget everything I’ve learnt and imagine goals like this:
When I know that the reality of growing as a human looks a bit more like this:
This is why tuning back into your goals, setting a course for focus and evaluating if you’re still heading in the right direction is so valuable. This doesn’t mean you’re not on the right path if you’re in the middle of the messy squiggle — but that you acknowledge where you’re at and adjust accordingly.
In the productivity world, focus is often touted as something you employ to tick all the things off your to-do list. While I do love this kind of focus (there’s an awesome book on it called Hyperfocus), I’m talking about focus in terms of priorities. Do you know what’s important to you and what you’d like to achieve? Do you spend your time and energy accordingly?
As August has whizzed by, I’ve felt the need to drill back into this focus, the focus on what’s important and what I want to achieve. I’ve gone back to plans made at the beginning of the year and started to pull together a picture of what I want the next 6 months to look like.
If you feel a little like you’ve lost focus yourself, or maybe you never found it in the first place — I’ve made a little worksheet to fill out to get you back on track! You can download it here.
Remember:
- No one can tell you your focus or priorities are wrong — they’re unique to you!
- Be proud of yourself — the little stuff, the internal work, the milestones, the realisations — they’re all important parts of growth
- Your focus changes over time, what was once really important becomes less so and vice versa — don’t beat yourself up over change
- Embrace what your path to success looks like and don’t get bogged down in others (I suggest drawing a wibbly wobby graph of your own and sticking it up)
- You are capable, brave and significant — your life is full of value!
As always, feel free comment below to chat about this topic or suggest any focus tips of your own!
