How to Find Focus
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How to Find Focus
1–10 of 38 posts
Re: How to Find Focus
#2I like the concept of divergent and convergent phases of life. This reminds me of a professor I had that said the arc of knowledge went "from thin to thick, then from thick to thin." Meaning that you started a course with no knowledge, filled your brain, then needed to put this all down on one piece of paper ("cheat sheet"). This stuck with me.
Re: How to Find Focus
#3On my cameras I usually turn the lens and the image adjusts
Re: How to Find Focus
#4I like the concept of divergent and convergent phases of life. This reminds me of a professor I had that said the arc of knowledge went "from thin to thick, then from thick to thin." Meaning that you started a course with no knowledge, filled your brain, then needed to put this all down on one piece of paper ("cheat sheet"). This stuck with me.
That rings true for me, but with a slight adjustment; once you have fill your brain with knowledge you can then condense it to the simplest model, from which the rest can be derived if needed again.
Re: How to Find Focus
#5This hit different. Exactly what I needed to read today
Re: How to Find Focus
#6The part that really separated this from previous 'say no' to stay focused articles is the fact that you need to evaluate multiple options before you know what to focus on. Figuring out the switching point of a diverging path to a converging one is probably unique to each person.
Re: How to Find Focus
#7For me, finding focus is a function of how much of your needs are already taken care of.
When you don’t have enough money to take care of all your needs for a long time, for example, you wind up doing things others ask you to do. And you have very little control over how much of your time and attention that will take up. You are forced to multitask and your mind is distracted.
Not only that, but your switching costs are very high. Like a person with a small poker stack, you can’t afford to take regular-size risks, only tiny risks. Any bad risk can set you back.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/economy/making-sense/analys...
This is why a UBI can raise the national IQ level, reduce stress, improve public health AND make us more productive and make better choices.
That is also why limited liability for entrepreners in USA is a great thing.
A person working overtime at McDonalds to make ends meet is not benefitting society as much as a person using some of that time on things not valued immediately by the market, such as spending time raising their kids, learning science, contributing to open source software or wikipedia etc. Their job will be gradually automated anyway, and we as a society will try to slow that process down because many consider wages to be the only “moral” way to get money to the people.
At the other extreme, having “f u money” you can say no to lots of things.
The “costly signal” that identifies a successful person with many options in a given area, is that — unlike the one still starting out or scrambling — they pass up perfectly good opportunities and are instead focused on actively avoid potentially inconvenient opportunities. While a person who is just trying to “make it” will have the opposite approach. They will pursue a lot of false negatives.
Re: How to Find Focus
#8A counterargument: losing focus just means that you are encountering difficulty, boredom or frustration in your current project. Losing focus does not mean you should start exploring other options because you haven't found the best fit yet; other projects that seem shiny now will inevitably go through their own difficult periods.
If you look for greener pastures whenever your organic focus starts to wane, you'll never make it through the challenges that create real value.
Re: How to Find Focus
#9This reminded me of the following exercise, which I hopefully recite correctly. I’ve first heard it in a podcast with the monk Anselm Grün, who counsels burned out managers in Germany:
Think about what you could do for hours as a child. What kept you so interested that time just passed by?
Then examine what wish, image or interest underlies these activities. You will often find clear links to your current occupation.
The assumption underlying this is that our interests are unique and not random, and that we have to find or rediscover them as they tend to get overshadowed over time, which removes us from feelings of flow and focus.
Re: How to Find Focus
#10A counterargument: losing focus just means that you are encountering difficulty, boredom or frustration in your current project. Losing focus does not mean you should start exploring other options because you haven't found the best fit yet; other projects that seem shiny now will inevitably go through their own difficult periods. If you look for greener pastures whenever your organic focus starts to wane, you'll neve…
I don't think this is a counterargument. I think he's saying that once you decide to do something, you'll stick with it if it matches your values and the learnings from your journey so far.
This resonates with me strongly. As someone who's started and stopped a lot of projects, I've often been afraid I would never settle on one thing. But now, even though I'm in a difficult phase with it, I feel more committed than ever to my current project.
I think this is in line with the post: I spent a lot of time in a "divergent phase", exploring options and testing possibilities (multiple smaller projects). Now, I'm in a "convergent phase" and focusing on just one thing for multiple years, even though it's hard.