The Beginners Guide to Staying Focused

I believe that there’s a simple formula to predict how much progress you’ll make in achieving your goals.

Simply take the amount of time you dedicate towards your goals, divide it by the number of goals you’re pursuing, and multiply by the length of time you stay focused. In mathematical terms it looks something like this…

Progress = (Time Available  / # of Goals) x Length of Focus

In the short term, a lot of other factors matter, too. But in the long run, it really does boil down to focus.

The fewer your goals and the longer your commitment to them, the more powerful your focus will be and the more progress you’ll make. It’s that simple.

The Challenge of Putting Theory Into Practice

While this formula seems obvious in theory, it’s harder than it looks in practice.

Looking back over the past five years of my life, I have to admit that there are some important areas where I’ve made very little progress. And it wasn’t always from a lack of effort. I felt like I was spinning my wheels— in constant motion, but going nowhere.

It’s only recently that I was able to see the situation more clearly. I’d been spreading myself too thin. Jumping from one idea to the next without really committing to anything.

Part of this was because I’m a naturally curious person, and have a hard time saying no to a new idea that excites me. But unfortunately, a big part of the problem is that I get bored and frustrated easily. Once the novelty of a new idea wears off, I jump quickly to a new one.

Struggling Against Human Nature

The idea of focus is simple and attractive on the surface. Who wouldn’t want less stress and fewer things to juggle in their life? The reason it’s hard has to do with our human nature. There are two aspects of focus that will always challenge us:

Letting go of a dream. Every dream or goal you have is attached to a desire you want to fulfill, and if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that our desires are bottomless.

Letting go of a particular dream, even for a season, feels like a loss. And to lose anything you care about is a sad and painful experience. So instead of letting go, we try to hold onto all of our dreams, and never have the bandwidth to really focus on any of them.

Not chasing novelty. Pursue any great idea or adventure far enough, and the excitement will begin to fade and progress will slow. The fuel of passion will need to be replaced by old fashioned hard work and commitment. 

If you can’t acknowledge and accept this reality, you will resent it. And you will be tempted to keep looking for newer and better ideas— but never making the kind of progress you desire because you can’t stay focused long enough.

Practical Tools for Staying Focused

In my lifelong search for focus, I’ve only ever found one thing that works: you must become obsessed with the quest to keep things as simple as possible. 

Because of the temptations mentioned in the last section— to chase novelty and hold onto old dreams— clutter naturally builds in our lives, just as it does in our homes. Only constant vigilance and a system for keeping focused can keep it at bay.

Here are three practical tools that have been a help to me in this area:

Creating an “avoid at all costs” list.

I’ve heard variations of this practice, but it goes something like this: create a list of 25 ways you want to improve your life. Then, choose your 5 highest priorities from among those. The remaining 20 don’t just become your “secondary” goals list, they become your “avoid at all costs” list, because the biggest obstacle to success isn’t failure, it’s distraction.

Of course, in reality, the remaining 20 items probably include some aspects of your life that you can’t just ignore. But the point of the practice remains— the most likely reason for you to get “stuck” in life is because you’re trying to do too much at once, not because you truly lack the skills.

Asking the question “What are the few things that really matter?”

I’ve learned to ask myself this question reflexively at many points throughout the day, even when I’m in meetings and conversations with other people. 

The question challenges me to distill any goal down to the few inputs that really matter. The few actions that can move the needle most. By focusing my efforts on just these few areas, I ensure that I’m doing the real thing, and not merely chasing busyness for its own sake.

Using a visual aid to remind me of my priorities.

Instead of relying on my memory or instincts to decide what’s important throughout the day, I surround myself with visual reminders of the prior decisions I’ve made. 

• I use a habit tracker to track the 5 daily habits that matter most to me.
• I “close the rings” on my Apple Watch to keep exercise top of mind. 
• I leave a Bible next to the place I eat breakfast to encourage reflection each morning.

Each of these tools on its own isn’t the secret key to focus. There are no secret keys— only sincere effort. As humans, we generally tend to be pretty good at whatever has our attention. 

The way to increase focus is to make focusing a bigger, more vivid part of your day using the tools above. Only then will focus become a habit that guides your day and keeps you on track towards the few things in your life that really matter.