Tag: focus

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The power of focus — Part 1

A Great Blue Heron look­ing for fish.

It was a cold and blustery, yet thor­oughly splen­did fall day when I roun­ded a corner near the mar­ina and saw the man. He crouched slightly at the bot­tom of con­crete stairs, arms ex­ten­ded, el­bows bent and palms fa­cing each oth­er. The most un­usu­al thing was that he re­mained per­fectly still for at least two minutes. He re­minded me of a her­on wait­ing for a fish to spear.

He was at the entry­way of the path I wanted to take so I paused to fig­ure out what was go­ing on. Then, In one flu­id move­ment, he lowered his arms, raised them and jumped lightly onto the six foot con­crete ledge in front of him. The fact that the heels of his feet hung over the edge did noth­ing to hamper him from slowly and grace­fully stand­ing up.

I was awed by his strength and body con­trol. But even more so by his in­tense fo­cus. And he had good reas­on to fo­cus. If his jump had failed, he would have fallen back­wards onto the con­crete, per­haps break­ing his back, head or end­ing his life altogether.

Dumbfounded, I didn’t even see him re­turn to his start­ing po­s­i­tion. But there he was again, crouched at the bot­tom of the stairs with no dis­cern­able signs of movement.

He seemed ob­li­vi­ous to me or any­thing else but I wor­ried about dis­tract­ing him, so slowly con­tin­ued my walk with head tilted down­wards, peek­ing at him from un­der the brim of my hat as he ex­ecuted two more per­fect jumps.

By now, I was close enough to no­tice that he was speak­ing to someone, through Bluetooth ear buds after each jump. Was the per­son on the oth­er end coach­ing him? Or were they a safety link in case he fell?

Later, I wished I’d stopped to talk to him but there was no way I wanted to in­ter­rupt his con­cen­tra­tion. As a writer, I’ve been in a sim­il­ar state a few times — sur­fa­cing from a story to real­ize hours have passed in­stead of five minutes, or to dis­cov­er the faint sound I’d been hear­ing was really a repair­man pound­ing on the door, ir­rit­ated that I wasn’t let­ting him in when he could see me sit­ting at my desk.

Intense fo­cus is not easy to achieve. Especially these days with cell­phones and oth­er devices read­ily to hand. But it’s an art worth achieving.

Check out the up­com­ing November blog to read about cou­gars and fo­cus, as well as sci­en­tific­ally proven ways to gen­er­ate that state of mind.

Photo cred­it Joshua Goddard

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Focus like a Cougar to Finish Your Book

Writing a book is an in­tense, chal­len­ging and re­ward­ing pro­cess. But if you’re work­ing on a big pro­ject and the dead­line is loom­ing, the in­tense and chal­len­ging as­pect can be overwhelming.

That’s how I felt last fall as I struggled to fin­ish The Cougar: Beautiful, Wild and Dangerous. I had so much fas­cin­at­ing in­form­a­tion! How could I pos­sibly con­dense it into suit­able ma­nu­script length by March 31?

Then I read an art­icle about ac­com­plish­ing goals in the Mayo Clinic news­let­ter. The three main points were:

1. Clarity of fo­cus. The best nev­er lose sight of the goal. The event is circled on the cal­en­dar. As the count­down be­gins, all activ­it­ies are dir­ec­ted to­ward that date.

2. Tunnel vis­ion. This means hav­ing the cour­age not to ac­cept an en­gage­ment or even re­spond to an email that doesn’t ad­vance the goal.

3. Intense com­mit­ment. Distractions must be elim­in­ated. That in­cludes cut­ting back on non­es­sen­tial ob­lig­a­tions. It also means hav­ing the dis­cip­line to walk away from people who are neg­at­ive and un­sup­port­ive.

I prin­ted those guidelines out and put them on my desk where I would see them every day. In or­der to ac­com­plish what I needed to do with­in the time avail­able, I cre­ated monthly, weekly and daily goals. It might sound scary, but it kept me on track!

Taking my com­mit­ment one step fur­ther, I set up my laptop in an up­stairs bed­room. That way I wasn’t dis­trac­ted by Rick, the dog or the ringing of the phone. And I didn’t have ac­cess to the in­ter­net and email un­less I used my PC down­stairs. It’s amaz­ing how much time that saved!

Some de­cisions were dif­fi­cult. I lim­ited get to­geth­ers with friends and, even though Bailey got a walk every day, there weren’t as many of the long, off leash romps on the beach that we both en­joy. Of course, none of this would have been pos­sible without an un­der­stand­ing and sup­port­ive partner.

A cougar focuses on its prey with intense concentration, never shifting its gaze even when circling around or changing position.
A cou­gar fo­cuses on its prey with in­tense con­cen­tra­tion, nev­er shift­ing its gaze even when circ­ling around or chan­ging position.

Cougars are known for their in­tense fo­cus so every day I told my­self to “fo­cus like a cou­gar.” I of­ten asked my­self, “Does this have any­thing to do with cou­gars?” If the an­swer was no, I made a note to deal with it after I sent the ma­nu­script in.

And yes! I made my dead­line, right on March 31. The Cougar will be in stores near the end of Sept.

Will I use the Mayo Clinic guidelines again? You bet! They’re ex­cel­lent strategies for fin­ish­ing a book, art­icle or thes­is. Or whatever else your goal is, be it train­ing for a mara­thon, los­ing ten pounds in two months or be­com­ing a millionaire.