What you focus your attention on determines how your life will be. In other words, your life experience to date-who you are, how you think, what you feel and do is the result of what you have chosen to focus your attention on.

Our focus of attention falls on a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum are people who regularly practice intense focus e.g. Athletes in training and in competition and artists in the creative flow; at the other end of the spectrum are those with attention deficiencies. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle- undoubtedly everyone has had the experience of being completely absorbed by a task; equally who hasn’t had the experience of their mind wandering rather than concentrating on the job at hand?

The experience of really focusing our attention on a particular task and being completely absorbed in that task has been famously described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, psychologist and author of Flow: The psychology of optimal experience, as being in flow. His research contends that, when we are in flow, we are fully absorbed in the task, we can achieve peak performance and are happier and more fulfilled. Flow can occur in all physical and mental spheres of human activity; essentially,  it’s the enjoyment of being absorbed in doing a task well.

So, if your life is the sum of what you focus on and you can self-direct your focus it would seem to make sense to develop and build your capacity to pull focus as and when you wanted? However, this can be easier said than done.

Our brains have two attention systems-one is referred to as “bottom up” and means that we’re responsive to external stimuli (like a ringing phone, a barking dog) The “Top down” system is what you choose to focus you attention on and this focus determines the quality of you life. As our lives get increasingly complex and busier with more ways to communicate than ever before (in person, by phone, e mail, instant messaging, twitter etc) this results in more of our attention being diverted. It can seem like we’re being pulled in many different directions and our energy for real focus is diminished.

What can we do to develop our capacity to pull focus?

• Choose your focus: We’ve probably all had a version of looking for a new gadget/product and suddenly seeing that gadget/product everywhere. Our brains are remarkably selective and will focus in on that particular object to the exclusion of others. Make this work to your advantage by remembering that your attention is a finite resource and decide what it is you will give your focus to.

• From multi-tasking to mono-tasking: While we may believe we are effectively doing two things at once the reality is we’re actually switching between tasks; it’s estimated that it can take our brains up to twenty minutes to re focus on the original task after being interrupted. Instead of trying to respond to everything it makes sense (and is more enjoyable) to fully absorb yourself in one task for a period of time.

• Manage your time: One quick way of making it easier to focus on one job at a time is batching tasks of a similar nature together and doing them all at once. Another way is to shorten a lengthy to-do list to a maximum of three tasks and focus completely on those.

In summary, developing your capacity to apply laser-focus at will and absorb yourself fully in a task of your choosing ensure that life would stop seeming like a series of random events that happen to you and more like something you create-your own work of art!

Related posts:

1. Finding your strengths My previous post referenced why playing to your strengths makes...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.