In this post, Dr. Eric Amidi reviews the book “Focus” by Daniel Goleman. The books starts off by explaining the anatomy of focus. The author asserts that “One way to boost our will power and focus is to manage our distractions instead of letting them manage us.”
In his book, Focus, Daniel Goleman takes a look at what he calls one of the scarcest resources in our world today: the ability to focus and use that ability in order for you to reach high performance in anything you choose to do.
One area he provides insight into is your ability to overcome feeling overwhelmed. Life is full of distractions. One type of distraction is the wealth of information at your disposal.
During his presentations, the author often references Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon, who wrote the following in 1977, “Information consumes attention…Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
Today’s society has provided you with tools that, by their very nature, keep you distracted and feeling fragmented. Goleman says, “Our phones and computers are designed to get us off focus, to seduce us, to draw our attention from this to that.”
What Can You Do To Overcome Today’s Distractions?
The first step is to make the decision to change your habits that cause you to feel distracted.
In doing so, the book teaches a concept that will help you do this. He calls it the “ingredients of rapport”, which are:
– Full mutual attention
– Nonverbal synchrony
– It feels good. It’s a pleasant joyous state
The key is to harness your ability to build rapport with others and truly connect with them, which the author describes as a lost art in today’s world.
Here are ways to do this:
– Turn off your cell phone’s ability to give you notifications every time an email comes in
– Try a new family rule: when you come home at night, everyone puts their cell phones in a drawer for an agreed upon time period (1 hour, 2 hours, etc) and you then talk to one another
– When you go out to eat, make everyone put their phones in the middle of the table. The first person to reach for their phone must pay for the meal
What Are The 3 Types Of Focus?
This book teaches that there are three types of focus:
– Inner focus
– Other focus
– Outer focus
Your inner focus is what allows you to tap into how well you manage yourself and your emotions. It refers to your ability to be “self-aware”. It helps you in terms of knowing your strengths and weaknesses and how confident you feel in the various areas of your life.
A strong inner focus is what aids you when it comes to handling distressing emotions. Your positive emotions help ensure that you’re able to bounce back when things go wrong and that you stay motivated as you work toward your goals.
“Other” focus is your ability to read other people. There are three parts to “other” focus:
Cognitive Empathy: Goleman describes it this way, “I understand how you think about things, how you see the world so I can communicate with you in a way that matters to you.”
Emotional Empathy: Your ability to gain an immediate sense of what’s going on in the other person.
Empathic Concern: the author describes it as, “I know how you think and feel. If there is something I can help you with, I’m predisposed to help you with that.”
“A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain.”
Outer focus means you can:
– Understand the “ecosystem” of an organization, such as your business, job or church
– See things from a systems view, where you know what strategies to try next
– See the big picture view
How Does Your Ability To Focus Affect Your Performance?
This author links a lack of focus with the inability to perform at your optimum ability. When you are overwhelmed and feel like you have too much to do and not enough time to do it, your performance drops dramatically.
Some of the reasons for this is that your stress hormones are at their highest, you’re in a state of “mental frazzle” and you can’t stop thinking about what’s upsetting you. Your performance abilities go down as your emotions take over your ability to pay attention and focus on the task at hand.
On the other hand, when you gain the ability to remove the distractions and focus 100%, top performance is achieved. He refers to being in flow and that you’ll feel incredibly good to be in that state.
An interesting aspect to top performance that the book references, is that of “mind wandering”. He states that mind wandering is the enemy of focus but is essential for creative insight.
After you gather information and focus on any problem you’re solving, the next step is to back away and let it go for a period of time. Daydream about the information and challenge.
This book asserts that: “This process allows you to make connections between remote elements in a new way that has value.”
Then, in order to execute, you have to go back into focus after your mind wandering sessions.
Meditation & Breathing Exercises Help Power Your Focus
“If you are doing mindfulness meditation, you are doing it with your ability to attend to the moment.”
As a way to increase your ability to remove distraction and focus your mind on one singular activity at a time, meditation is recommended. Meditation helps you focus on your breathing patterns until you clear your mind of all the random thoughts making you feel overwhelmed.
He references Steve Jobs as someone who used meditation in this way to become more focused in order to achieve top performance.
Finally, this book stresses that your ability to gain “attention” is a mental muscle that can be strengthened over time, just as you would strengthen your muscles by going to the gym.
“If you do a practice and train your attention to hover in the present, then you will build the internal capacity to do that as needed – at will and voluntarily.”
Overall, this book is a great and provides with a wealth of information and real life examples to improve your focus and performance.
Stay tuned for more book reviews by Dr. Eric Amidi.
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Power of focus
This is a great book. Jack Canfield has a book about focus too. That is a great book too to read.
