The ability to focus is becoming progressively rare.
The ability to refocus, while underpraised, is even more.
Part of the reason focus is difficult is that we haven’t done the thankless work to figure out what we should be focusing on.
If you don’t do that, it doesn’t really matter if you’re focused or not.
And if it doesn’t matter if you’re focused in the first place, what’s the point of refocusing?
We know that being focused is a good thing, but we hate that being focused means that we’re ignoring everything else.
Missing out is incredibly frustrating, so we settle for what Todd Henry calls “Continuous Partial Attention” (maybe he’s referencing Linda Stone)?
The result is that everything suffers. You can’t excel at what you’re doing, you can’t investigate what you’re not doing.
So take a minute. Get a pen. Write down what you should be focusing on in this season of life. Put it somewhere you’ll see it regularly. Then come back to that idea because you will be distracted .
There are too many brilliant people working for too many relentless companies all working diligently to distract you – they’re going to succeed from time to time.
Your job is to shorten the intervals of distraction, remind yourself of that what and why of your focus, and then refocus on what you’re called to focus on in the first place.