Fix your Focus and Starve your distractions
What is the cause of losing our attention?
As an individual, if you cannot focus and pay attention then your ability to achieve your goals across the board diminishes. If you want to start a business or learn a new skill, all of those things become so much harder if you cannot focus and pay attention. In other words, if you have the brain of a goldfish then you will NEVER become successful. If you want to be a good parent or partner and you keep looking at every ping on your phone which leads to less attention to the person or your child.
If you are a business owner and you are surrounded by people who cannot pay attention our ability to solve our collective problems also breaks down. being focused is CRUCIAL for achieving goals and problem-solving.
Furthermore, even on a personal level. If you are with someone and you cannot give them your full focus then you will not be able to form those deep connections.
Dr James Williams who is an expert on attention said that there are different types of attention and we as a society seem to lose all of them
The Spotlight
A spotlight is a form of attention where have an immediate task and you need to focus so you can proceed with that immediate task.
eg.
You are at a party and your friends ask you to get them some drinks from the fridge. If you are constantly interrupted by checking your phone then you will forget who ordered what. So your ability to just home on an immediate task is being disrupted
Starlight
This is more of a medium-term goal. A medium-term goal is a goal that ranges from 2-4 years. It is called Starlight because you do not know where you are however there is a light that you orientate towards. If you do not focus, that will also be disrupted and if your life is full of distractions or your concentration is being hijacked by very petty goals then you will never reach that medium-term goal. If you cannot complete short-term goals then you can NEVER complete those long-term goals.
We are in an Attention pandemic and it is killing those that are too weak to fight it. It is mentally killing us because we humans are like computers in a way that if computers have so a denial of service attack which is basically when loads of hackers attack a computer system and the system crashes. We are the same because when we have so much information coming at us every couple of minutes then we will crash and lose our way of life.
I hope this newsletter was helpful and I hope this was a wale call to Feed your focus and starve your distractions