Why Focus Is Important For Growth

Hello, wonderer,

Have you ever experienced this?: It’s Sunday night. Near bedtime, you are thinking about Monday, the next week, everything ahead. Anticipating the inevitable “What did you do over the weekend?” questions, you have a confounding realization. You don’t know. Your entire weekend flew by in a blink, and you have no idea if anything productive actually happened.

Perhaps this brings you dread. Or maybe you shrug it off with a “What’s another weekend in the grand scheme of things?” attitude. Yet, it is strange, isn’t it? How does that happen? And what if all your hopeful weekends inevitably become fruitless?

What the mystery of the disappearing weekend questions is something that affects nearly every second of our human experience: our relationship with focus.

You may have already rolled your eyes at the dreaded word: “focus”. It’s haunting, I know. Humans have an innately complicated history with focus. To put it simply, focus is hard. Trying to focus every waking moment of the day is even harder.

Mental fatigue is very real. Subconsciously, the human mind is wired to take short cuts through everything and ration mental energy. That initial push back you feel when trying to focus on a task, perhaps it comes to you as a sudden wave of boredom or tiredness, is your brain trying to tell you to take it easy, conserve energy.

Conserving mental energy is helpful, and sometimes necessary. So why not let apathy have its way? Why take the path of most resistance?

Avoiding focus can become maladaptive. Suddenly, long-form anything is met with inner contention. Deep conversations are interrupted with notifications. And all of the dreams we play out in our heads remain unattainable within our realm of mundane existence.

CHAOS AND BURNOUT

Chronic struggle with focus typically has two modes: chaos and burnout. Like me, you may find yourself constantly switching between the two in a seemingly infinite cycle.

If you are stressed, you may find it hard to focus because there are too many tasks demanding your attention all at once. Or perhaps you’re experiencing something so intense that it feels impossible to invest focus elsewhere. This is the mode of chaos, when everything feels loud and important.

In the chaos, you may find immediate motivation to resolve your stressors. But the chaos is so suffocating that the sudden focus you put forward feels like a measly drop of water in a bone-dry well. Typically, you won’t resolve everything all at once. When extreme effort is met with less than desired outcomes, you risk burnout.

In burnout, you are less likely to find that immediate burst of motivation to resolve your stressors, (which are very much still there). Your emotional reactions to stress may go into a hibernation state, and your ability to focus becomes ghostly.

In the seemingly endless cycle of chaos and burnout, you may be pulled out of burnout mode when your stressors get so intense that they force you to take action again. And if the chaos, again, is too much for your current mental bandwidth, you risk falling back into burnout.

GROWTH

So what’s one way we can escape this cycle?: repairing our relationship with focus. And why would we want to escape in the first place?: effective personal growth.

In chaos and burnout, we are not achieving effective personal growth. And growth is a necessary ingredient to leading a fulfilling life. All said and done, that’s mostly what we, humans, are striving toward.

Let’s explore the concept of effective personal growth a little deeper.

We experience effective personal growth when are are able to apply effort or a change to our life that has a consistent, long-lasting benefit. You may experience bursts of personal growth among times of chaos. However, it’s not always consistent or long-lasting, especially if you immediately return to burnout and lose your momentum.

To discover how we can achieve consistent growth, it’s important to understand the connection between memory, emotions, and stress.

MEMORY

Memory, our impression of everything that has happened before, is the guide to each unfolding moment. The human mind relies on memories of similar past experiences to determine how we should act or react in each moment. This applies to huge, life altering events, as well as the seemingly insignificant, disappearing weekend.

EMOTIONS

Our emotional association to each memory will affect how likely we are to seek out similar experiences in the future.

For example, if I worked strenuous hours on a project’s proposal just for it to be immediately rejected, I would have a negative emotional association with that memory. I may not be so ambitious in the future, or I may decide to change my next proposal’s topic, or I may decide that I’m terrible at my job and I should quit. The severity of the reaction can depend on how deeply the negative emotion affected me. It will be different for every person.

At the same time, it is strongly established that the chances of tackling the next project’s proposal with excitement is much slimmer than before.

If I worked strenuous hours on a different project’s proposal and it was immediately approved, I would have a positive emotional association with that memory. I may decide I’m a genius who deserves a promotion, or that I should always stay on similar topics, and that the long working hours were worth it because it paid off.

With this, it’s strongly established that the chances of tackling the next project’s proposal with excitement is either sustained or greater than before.

To summarize, good emotional associations = “I want to do that again!” Bad emotional associations = “I never want to do that again!” And generally, what determines if we have a positive or negative reaction is the reward. Are we rewarded for our effort? Was it worth it?

So, what about fairly neutral experiences? What if I worked minimal hours and submitted a project’s proposal that got a similar response to the last five proposals? I have fulfilled the main objective, but it’s not as exciting because there is not as much growth.

STRESS

According to Columbia News, “The brain plays back and prioritizes high-reward events for later retrieval and filters out the neutral, inconsequential events, retaining only memories that are useful to future decisions.” (1)

Considering this dynamic, we are more likely to remember the high-risk, high-reward events than the low-risk, low-reward ones. This may lead us to seek sprints of intense effort for the possibility of immediate gain. In some cases, this is the necessary push you need to reach your goals. In others, it can trap you in chaos mode and split your focus.

What about the high-risk, no-reward events? What happens when you are putting in extreme effort for no gain, or when you experience intense emotional tax with no benefit? According to Harvard Health (2), prolonged periods of stress will cause increased activity in the survival brain and decreased activity in high-order functioning (such as critical and creative thinking). This will likely create an aversion to similar future experiences. It can also trap you in burnout mode, locking your focus on simply surviving.

Sometimes, we need high-risk, no-reward events to learn from failure. Other times, we need high-risk, high-reward events to teach us that hard work can pay off. But in reality, we cannot function on these extremes all of the time. Simply put, it is emotionally and mentally exhausting.

CONSISTENCY

One solution to the endless cycle of chaos and burnout is, you guessed it, consistency.

So, let us consider the less memorable, not as popular neutral mode. We already know there’s a natural aversion to low-reward vs. high-reward tasks. So, how can we counteract to create a positive emotional association ergo positive memories ergo likelihood of repetition for lower reward tasks?

That is where focus comes to play.

We know that the memories we create from past experiences can guide our future ones. So, what if we focused on creating wholesome, in-the-moment kind of memories while doing consistent, ordinary tasks?

Did you feel suddenly tired or bored when you read the words consistent or ordinary? Worry not! That’s your brain’s natural, learned response to avoid the lower or no reward tasks. Your subconscious might actually be convinced that consistency creates zero reward depending on your current relationship with focus and effective personal growth. Once you begin to repair your relationship with focus, recognizing the value of lower reward tasks can be much easier.

BE BORED

One of the first things we can do to repair our relationship with focus is to sit with our boredom. So, you find yourself growing bored of this essay? Your first instinct may be to unlock your phone, turn on the television, or do literally anything other than playing witness to my yapping. It’s okay to accept that instinct. But I challenge you to resist the instinct and actually let yourself feel the boredom. Stare at the wall, the back of your hand, or close your eyes until you are ready to read again. How long did it take you to regain your focus? You may be surprised if perhaps only a couple minutes have passed.

(And if you feel like you won’t be ready to continue reading any time soon, Setting Achievable and Rewarding Goals and Prioritization and Pacing may be helpful for you).

AVOID MULTITASKING

Another way we can repair our relationship with focus is to challenge our habit of multitasking. In reality, doing more than one task at once is not possible.

“WAIT!” you may protest. “That’s not true because I can fold laundry while watching a movie, talk on the phone while driving, or listen to music while working.”

Being occupied with multiple tasks in a given time period is, unfortunately, not the same as doing two things at once. What’s actually happening when you fold laundry while watching a movie? You look down to match socks and you’ve missed a minute or two of the movie. You may have only heard half of the conversation, and you didn’t catch all of the facial expressions that would help you understand the importance of the scene. So, did you actually watch the movie? Or did you partly watch the movie? And you may look down to find that you matched two pairs of socks to the wrong ones.

In reality, you are rapidly switching between two tasks at once, not simultaneously completing two tasks at once. According to the APA (3), this switching between tasks can actually take more time and cause more errors.

Even something like holding a conversation while driving, which feels almost like a muscle memory, can be affected by switching. Anything taking your attention away from the road can cause errors of judgment or slow your reaction time. And when you listen to music while working, are you catching all the lyrics? Are you fully focused on the task at hand? Or do you pause a moment to appreciate the art?

This feels strict, doesn’t it? Where is the fun, entertainment, joy?! Don’t worry. I’m not suggesting that you should never do this. Sometimes, I need to turn on music to distract myself from the torture of washing dishes. You may have similarly found tasks that you cannot complete without a layer of distraction. And so what if a mug is returned to the wrong cabinet, right?

What is important is that we are not trying to constantly distract ourselves from the experiences that really matter, the ones we want to remember. And moments of personal growth, however small, are ones we want to remember.

BE EFFORTFUL

If we avoid multi-tasking, we are allowing ourselves to exist in the present moment without distractions. It’s also important to be effortful with what we do in the present moment. Why? Putting effort in connecting with the present will help us to remember the benefit of that moment.

Let’s go back to the feeling of boredom. When you are bored, what is your first instinct? Mine is typically to find any form of media that’s immediately entertaining. Is that effortful? Not really. And you’ll find that going the path of least resistance often results in feeling unfulfilled with how you used your time, a.k.a. the disappearing weekend.

If you are feeling bored, you might first consider what you want to do with your time. Can you be productive, or do you need rest? Even moments of rest can be effortful. Perhaps you had a long day, and you simply want to find something enjoyable to watch. Although it would take a little more time and effort than scrolling aimlessly through socials, finding a film or show that sparks a particular interest of yours would be more effortful and likely a more fulfilling way to enjoy the evening.

On the other hand, maybe you are trying to complete a dreaded project. You have removed all other distractions, you are ready to work, but you are only putting in half of the effort. You may find your focus wanes more often when you are not putting in full effort to actually complete the task.

This is something many people struggle with. It’s helpful to observe and then ask. Observe your feelings toward the project. Ask why you might be feeling that way. I might have observed that I procrastinated on writing this essay. Why might I have dreaded the task? I realized I didn’t know how long it would take, and I didn’t want to feel rushed. No worries! I decided to write this on one of my “timeless” days. When I didn’t feel rushed to complete the project within a deadline, I was finally able to approach it in an effortful, dedicated way.

(If you are interested in reading about “timeless” days, I’d be happy to write more about that soon!)

SET ACHIEVABLE AND REWARDING GOALS

In order to maintain consistent focus and feel rewarded for our effort, we have to set achievable goals. Let’s say that you really want to go to space. You must observe going to space as the ultimate resolution of a dream. Every goal you set toward this passion will act as a fragment of achieving that dream.

You would start building those goals with tasks like checking out books about planets at the library. Maybe you go to space camp over the summer. In school, you would focus on physics and astronomy. You might join a robotics team. All of these smaller tasks, while leading toward the dream of going to space, are rewarding on their own. Why? In achieving each goal, you have experienced growth.

It can be easier to consider this concept on a smaller scale. What if your dream was to read a book? Reading a book can be hard especially if you have a complicated relationship with focus. How could you set an achievable goal toward reading a book? You may decide to read a few pages a day, maybe a whole chapter. Or you set a 15 minute timer, and read as much as you can.

What happens when you’ve reached that smaller goal? You know that you have not read the whole book. Yet, you’ll feel more fulfilled than you did before you started reading the book. Now, you are more convinced than ever that you can read the whole book because you proved to yourself that you could read a chapter. The focus became rewarding.

It’s important that the dreams and goals we set toward them must be things that we actually want to accomplish. If you are trying to attain something that you do not really want to attain, you might not have much luck finding fulfillment out of reaching these goals.

At first, reaching your goals may feel very difficult. That does not mean you don’t want to reach them. It’s your mind’s way of trying to save you the trouble of doing something that may not immediately benefit you. But with focus and patience, we can re-learn how to achieve growth without burning out.

TASK COMPLETION MOMENTUM

We can continue to repair our relationship with focus by letting focus win. What does that mean? We want to give our minds a reason to believe the discomfort of consistent focus is worth the end result. When we complete a task, we can experience some form of joy or relief. This is the validation we need to remember this moment as beneficial, thus shaping our future experiences. The momentum we get from completing one task can roll over like a domino effect, turning into motivation to begin the next.

Considering your entire to-do list at once can feel exhausting even before any work is done. What if you just pointed to a random task and completed it? Don’t think about everything else that needs to be done. How do you feel after doing that task? Do you feel like you could do another?

If you said, “Yes!”, then you have benefited from the momentum of task completion. Your brain believes that focusing on one task until completion was worthwhile because it resulted in reaching your goal. Now, you are more likely to attempt another.

But what if you said, “No”? What if you completed the task and you now feel exhausted from the effort? Then you may want to consider prioritization and pacing.

PRIORITIZATION AND PACING

Prioritization and pacing are both important in repairing your relationship with focus. If you were to write down a list of all the things you need to and want to do right now, you would likely prioritize the things you need to do. Almost always, the things we need to do are more draining than the things we want to do. If you are only focusing on the things you need to do, what is the likely outcome? That’s right, chaos and burnout.

So, can we re-frame how we prioritize?

Among the things we have to do, there are likely a few that we don’t have to do right here and now.

Consider the following list:

• Pay rent
• Eat lunch
• Yard work

If you are likely to forget important, intangible responsibilities like paying bills online, you may prioritize paying rent before taking a lunch break. But is mowing the lawn more important than eating lunch? If you decided to mow the lawn before lunch, you’ll be doing a strenuous activity on an empty stomach, causing low energy and perhaps frustration. And as we know, that will make you less likely to approach yard work with as much excitement in the future.

When we prioritize tasks of most importance first, it’s helps us to maintain focus because we innately know this needs to get done now. Additionally, we’re not risking losing focus on a task of lesser priority because we are too busy worrying about the other, more important tasks that need to be completed.

So what if you paid rent, ate lunch, started on yard work, and you feel yourself of the brink of collapse? That’s when pacing comes to play.

Consider the following want-to-do list:

• Watch favorite television show
• Read a new book
• Go for a walk

The goal of pacing is to break up our need-to-do list with compatible want-to-do tasks.

If I’m physically spent during yard work, I’m not likely to prioritize the walk during this break. Since yard work isn’t very mentally taxing, I might decide to take a break with reading a chapter of a new book. Perhaps I’m not very fond of cleaning up after lunch, so I might use watching my favorite show as a good incentive for finishing the dishes. And maybe I get stressed after paying bills, so I may decide to take a quick walk to blow off steam.

It’s important to consider that your need-to-do and want-to-do list will be endless. You will always have responsibilities and unfulfilled dreams. Prioritizing the most urgent responsibilities and compatible desires can help stay on track with the focus, completion, and fulfillment cycle.

What if you are stuck somewhere in the chaos and burnout cycle? What if you feel like you can’t complete anything? Start by prioritizing the easiest task instead, the one that requires the least amount of mental energy. Pace that with the most enjoyable task.

It’s helpful to give yourself clear expectations when you are pacing. An example might be: write an essay then watch one episode of your favorite show. It is equally important to be flexible when pacing. What if you have task completion momentum, and you want to keep working? Do it! But periodically check in and make sure you are not overtaxing yourself.

What if you are really struggling to complete the focused goal at hand? Experiment. Cut your goal in half. Cut your want or “reward” in half. Can’t finish your project in one sitting? Watch half an episode and come back to it. If you are really struggling with getting back to the goal after the break, you may be risking burnout. Consider breaking the goal into smaller sections by topic. Or perhaps it’s helpful to base your expectations on time frames of focus like 30 minutes of work and 5 minutes of break. And if that doesn’t work, try switching your focus to a different, more easily achievable goal.

BE HONEST

Whatever you do, don’t give your focus a reason to cry and run away. Be honest with yourself. If you can only maintain 5 solid minutes of focus, schedule a task that you can break into 5 minute chunks. If you can manage to do that for an hour, challenge yourself to do 6 minutes of focus, 7, 8, 9, 10. Now, you’ve doubled your focus time. You have evidence that you can focus for twice as long as you could before. How does that feel? Can you see the growth?

REST IS OKAY

Repairing your relationship with focus doesn’t have to be scary. And it will be most comfortable and fulfilling if you don’t force yourself into a change you simply aren’t ready for. So take your time.

And when thinking about how else you may be able to repair your relationship with focus, try to remember that, often times, doing something is so much better than nothing. Pick up a book, talk to a friend, keep yourself engaged in the moment.

And if you truly feel in your heart that you can’t do anything productive? Meditate. Focus on your breath. Listen to the birds outside or the air flowing around you. Let each second make an impression. Let yourself hold this moment as a time when rest wasn’t stressful, when it was worthy of being remembered. And in that focus, you will find another moment of growth.

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1 - When Storing Memories, Brain Prioritizes Those Experiences That Are Most Rewarding, Columbia News

2 - Protect Your Brain from Stress, Harvard Health

3 - Multitasking: Switching Costs, American Psychological Association

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Hello, wanderer,

Lately, I have been inspired to explore constructive topics like these. If you enjoyed this and want to read more essays like it, please let me know!

xoxo, for now,

-your friend, trying to focus