"Life is available only in the present moment. If you abandon the present moment, you cannot life the moments of your life deeply." - Thich Nhat Hanh
Greg McKeown starts this chapter with a story of Coach Larry Gelwix, who coached the Highland High School Rugby team to 418 wins, 10 losses, and twenty national championships over 36 years. Coach Gelwix has a simple question which, conveniently, is a simply acronym for win as well: "What's Important Now?"
This helps his players focus - instead of getting caught up in what just happened (the past) or worrying if they will win (the future), it helps them focus on the play they are in "right now" (McKeown's emphasis). It also allows the players to stay focused on how they are playing:
"Larry believes a huge part of winning is determined by whether the players are focused on their own game or their opponent's game. If the players start thinking about the other team they lose focus. Consciously or not, they start wanting to play the game the other team is playing. They get distracted and divided. By focusing on their game in the here and now, they can all unite around a single strategy. This level of unity makes execution of their game plan relatively frictionless."
Coach Gelwix makes a difference between being beaten and losing. Being beaten means they were better than his team. Losing means that the team lost focus on what was essential.
To operate at your highest level of contribution, says McKeown, we have to deliberately tune in to what is important in the here and now.
For the Essentialist, there is only the now. There is not the past with its mistakes and errors or the future with its possibilities or worrying about the things we cannot control. There is only being focused and present in the current moment and on what we are doing now.
He revisits the Ancient Greek concepts of time, something we have touched on before here as well: chronos, the simple passage of time, and kairos, those moments in time that are right, opportune, different. The way of the Essentialist is to tune into the present, into the kairos moments, to those things that are truly important right now.
To be focused is to be present in the moment. To this end, McKeown points out that while some multi-tasking may be possible, what is not possible is multi-concentration or multi-focus. We can only focus on one thing at a time.
So how do we focus? How do we be in the now?
- Figure Out What Is Important Right Now: "When faced with so many tasks and obligations that you can't figure out which to tackle first, stop. Take a deep breath. Get present in the moment and ask yourself what is the most important this very second - not what's important tomorrow or even an hour from now. If you're not sure, make a list of everything vying for your attention and cross off anything that is not important right now."
- Get The Future Out Of Your Head: A helpful practice McKeown mentions here is taking a moment and listing things which are essential - but not right now- out of his head and onto a piece of paper. This helps him to focus by not losing the ideas and knowing that these were now things that he did not need to act on.
- Prioritize: After prioritizing the "Right Now" list, work on those first, one at a time until they are done. This allows focus on those things.
McKeown quotes the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who spends an hour a day drinking tea with other monks:
"Suppose you are drinking a cup of tea. When you hold the cup, you might like to breathe in, to bring your mind back to your body, and you become fully present. And when you are truly there, something else is also there -life, represented by the cup of tea. In that moment you are real, and the cup of tea is real. You are not lost in the past, in the future, in your projects, in your worries. You are free from all of your afflictions. And in that state of being free, you enjoy your tea. That is the moment of happiness, and of peace."
Pay attention, says McKeown, to the kairos moments of our day. Write them down, think of what triggered that moment and what you brought from it. If you can recognize that trigger, you can try to re-create it.
---
Application:
Typically at this point I would write "As long-time readers of my blog know...". But that would yet another rehashing of a comment that we have discussed for a long, long time: I have trouble focusing. Instead, it is perhaps more useful to consider the wider world around us.
And how that world does everything in its power to prevent focusing.
We live in an age of distraction. Mathew Crawford in his book The World Beyond Your Head refers to the loss of what he calls The Attention Commons, that space that used to exist where people were effectively free from having their attention grabbed by advertising or a constant stream of noise and images. Nicholas Carr in his book The Shallows quotes research that notes that at the best of times, our minds can hold 3-5 thoughts in working memory - and thanks to the wonder of the InterWeb and the plasticity of our brains, we are literally becoming unable to concentrate on deep issues. The very fact that we can be in a meeting with people speaking and a computer and two cell phones in front of us, checking each for updates as we move from screen to screen, never really in any one conversation - and that this is acceptable behavior - should give a clue about how the modern world values focus.
With this sort of avalanche against us, the ability to focus in the modern world is almost a superpower.
What is the best way I have been dealing with it? Very old methods. Do one thing at a time and, to the best of your ability, remove all other options to multi-focus (e.g., write and check e-mail or even, for me, write and listen to something). Do things via analog (which almost by default is doing one thing at at time). And try, more and more, to do less and less via the InterWeb.
Focusing in the modern environment is not impossible. It is just very, very hard.
Now that's a profound thought - only the now is real, everything else can be classified as non-real.
ReplyDeleteOf prioritizing two quotes that come to mind:
"Just do the next thing." Elisabeth Elliott
"Don't look back, you're not going that way." Ragnar in the TV series Vikings
McKeown's statement differentiating multi-tasking from multi-concentration and multi-focus was quite interesting to me because I cannot multi-task. My brain just isn't wired to do it, so it's something of a curiosity to me. It's considered a standard asset by much of the world, so it's nice to see someone placing a higher value on singular focus (or at least that's how I read it.)
Learning to take control of one's attention is a crucial skill, I think, especially in a world that wants everyone deliberately and permanently distracted. The battle of the right to use an adblocker and all that. Some things I just have to win at for my own sake.
Well now, that was a rather random collection of thoughts for a comment. Good job, TB, on giving us such interesting things to think about.
Leigh, it is a pretty interesting thought - but the more I ponder it, the more it is true. This moment is truly the only one we are fully in. The past is only a memory we can visit, the future a place we cannot see yet. Only now - and now- and now - is reality.
DeleteI do like those quotes. Elliott's I have heard; the redoubtable Ragnar's I have read in other versions.
The multi-focus made a lot of sense to me. There are things that I can (in theory) multi-task, like folding laundry and listening to a podcast or music. But those are very limited, at least for me. And focus, I get - and it is true: I can only focus on one thing at a time. And learning to keep my focus on that one thing until it is done is a real challenge.
I like to think that job postings have ditched the "multi-tasking, quick paced environment" bullet point as that is another way to say "we have no control of anything".
I do wonder - based on your comment - if learning to take control of one's attention is a skill that we should teach our children and ourselves much more rigorously than we do. After all, in a world of distractions, it is a key skill.
And thanks very much for the kind words. It is weird; I have seldom done a series like this and never quite know how it is going to land.
The multi versus singular focus concepts of work flow is an interesting one. I used to feel that I had some sort of deficit because I couldn't focus on more than on thing at a time. But I've learned that these are real things with the labels polytropism and monotropism.
DeleteI like Mckeowns term "focus" because I think it's more accurate than "task." Like you, I can listen to something while I do something fairly rote with my hands, but I never could study to music.
Leigh, like many things something only jumps out at you after multiple readings. That "focus" differentiation was always there, but it never became real like it did this time.
DeleteFocus is more accurate because I understand what I can accomplish when I focus and when I cannot. Thus, for example, I can only listen to music while doing another task for not more than 30 minutes before it becomes too distracting - except, interestingly, while weight lifting. The only thing I can figure is that 100% physical activity of that nature leaves the mind free.
Controlling one's attention.....hmmm....what with instant communications available because of cell phones and the Internet resulting in the increasing shorter attention spans of each generation, now add in MSM presenting news/agendas....ooooh, almost forgot AI! How will a person know if something is even real?! Focus, distraction.....that approaching horizon is looking darker and darker.
ReplyDeleteNylon12 - Nicholas Carr's books The Shallows and Superbloom are well worth a read (although I will note Mr. Carr is not great at suggesting solutions). I think in the end people will only have two choices: get swept away by the flow of information and demands for attention or severely limit them by their choices.
DeleteFor example, as listed above, I am adopting/trying to keep more analog methods of doing things like reading, note taking, and studying. My visits to the InterWeb are becoming briefer and briefer as I do a sweep of a handful of websites and blogs I follow at specific times of the day. The websites (mostly economic) are more to stay informed economically.
If focus = success and independence in the future, it will be won by those that can and will manage the information streams and attention demands in their lives.
I am pretty good at focusing on the here and now instead of past and future, but I do admit that my focus on single tasks is not what it was or could be. I have a lot more problems especially focusing on reading books. For some reason, the internet hasn't grabbed me as I am quite able of going on a vacation and not checking it for the entire time. But I know I'm probably in a small minority with that ability.
ReplyDeleteEd, FOMO is something that has overtaken much of modern culture. I can get close to your abstinence of the InterWeb on vacation; I need to get better. Hikes are great for that because generally, you are completely out of range.
Delete